The IRS Wants To Help Make Your Tax Returns Public
The government that wants no transparency in its governing wants complete transparency in the private affairs of its citizens. The America we once knew is soon to be no more.
Consumer groups and privacy advocates are attacking proposed Internal
Revenue Service rules that would spell out how tax-return preparers may
legally sell financial information and other data from their clients'
returns.
The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable
privacy of federal income-tax returns. If it succeeds, accountants and
other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from
individual returns — or even entire returns — to marketers and data
brokers.
....Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and
financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would
prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly
reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax
preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer
Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes.
"They think, 'This person is a tax professional, and I'm going to rely
on them.' "
The IRS was unable to explain why this
regulation had suddenly been proposed. Their spokesman just shrugged
and suggested it was routine housekeeping to keep up with the
electronic revolution. Sure it was. H&R Block, unsurprisingly, "did
not respond to requests for comment."
Fine that you do your own taxes. But if you send them electronically. They go
through H&R Block, with TaxCut or Intuit with TurboTax. That gives them the right to
sell my info. Or yours. This will also give Intuit a new revenue
stream.
This probably applies to all the methods offered by the IRS, since those use contractors. Which makes a good protest to be mailing in paper tax returns. That
is a lot less efficient for the IRS. All electronic tax returns go
through civilian contractors who will get revenue from this rule
proposal.
Only the taxpayers (required by law to file) will lose here.
Welcome to George Bush's IRS. Your whole life is now for sale as
long as it benefits someone who's a Republican campaign contributor.
Just a reminder of the climate we lived in. The Dixie Chicks "controversy" was caused by this comment made at a London concert:
Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.
That was it. That was all it took.
GREAT new song. You can hear it for free on their home page, just turn up your speakers, it plays automatically - lyrics are there too.
From the band that Christopher Hitchens called "fucking fat slags." Hitch must have thought the band was called "The Delirium Tremens". No wonder he hated them!
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger And how in the world can the words that I said Send somebody so over the edge That they’d write me a letter Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing Or my life will be over
