Anonymous Newspaper Commenters Subpoenaed In Tax Case 394
skuzzlebutt writes "In a federal tax case reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal last week, a local businessman has been paying his employees in gold coins instead of cash or ACH, and has reportedly told them that they can only be taxed on the face value of the coinage — not the much higher market value of the metal. The United States disagreed, and brought him up on 57 counts of income tax evasion, tax fraud and criminal conspiracy. The non-authenticated comments section of the original article brought a lot of supporters out of the woodwork, including a few who thought the jury should be hung (literally, procedurally, or figuratively ... pick one). In response, the prosecution has subpoenaed the names of the anonymous commenters, citing fears of jury safety. Or something. The obvious questions of privacy and protected speech aside, for the folks that support the defendant (the newspaper is fighting the subpoena), this also brings back into the spotlight the troll-empowering nature of pseudo-anonymous, non-authenticated boards. If they want to find you, they will; is anonymous commenting still worth it, or is it just too risky for the board owners?"
How the judge SHOULD rule (Score:2, Interesting)
The judge should look at each comment individually as well as holistically against other comments apparently by the same commenter.
If the comments appear to be a credible and actual threat against a juror, as opposed to someone blowing off steam, making non-credible threats, or just blowing off steam, then it's worth a closer look.
To determine if unauthenticated comments apparently made by the same commenter are made by the same commenter I would order the newspaper to provide a statement saying the comments are very likely from the same computer, very unlikely from the same computer, or there is no way to tell. If the post looks like it's from the same person, and the computer is the same, the court can assume it's the same until someone claims otherwise.
Now once I have a list of comments that are credible threats, then it's time to go further:
I would give a special master subpoena power for the IP and login-time information for those posts and subpoena power to the ISPs for the approximate street address of the customer. The court would use this to determine if the seemingly credible threats really were credible. If a threat said "I'm going to walk into your office and shoot you" but the threat came from a town 3 states away, that's likely not credible. Once I've gotten down to the credible threats, then and only I would allow the person's name and address to be subpoenaed. I would also look very favorably on anyone who, upon being contacted by the court or the police, claimed they were joking or blowing off steam. After all, out of every random group of people making credible-sounding threats like these, by far most are harmless.
Why make it traceable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know why forum administrators even bother keeping around enough information to reveal the identity of an anonymous poster?
I mean, I can see keeping around the web server logs for a day or two, to help debug problems. And if you do analytics, keeping the logs around long enough for the analytics software to compute aggregate data.
But why keep any data longer than that; especially data that's detailed enough to tie an IP# to a posted message?
Face Value vs Ore Value (Score:5, Interesting)
So lets say I take my pay check and head off to the bank and when cashing it, get a roll of pennies. Further suppose that one these pennies has some rare quality making it worth $100 to a collector... is that an extra $100 of Income?
Re:i'll be the first to say.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently they want the identities of all submitters of comments on that article. Not just the ones who made threats (going from the vague to the hyperbole).
It's actually a chilling effect. One day you are commenting on a newspaper article (without making threats), the next day your name and address pop up on some prosecutors desk while he is investigating another commenter on the same article.
Who were these authors? (Score:3, Interesting)
And should they have been prosecuted? They formented a war ya know.
Publius, Pacificus, Cattalus, Horatius and Philo Camillus, Silence Dogood, Alice Addertongue, Fanny Mournful, Obadiah Plainman, Busy Body, Populus, An American, A Son of Liberty ,"Vindex the Avenger".
The tax dodge itself seems spurious (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely then, should they choose to sell these they'll pay income tax on any profit they make. If they use them as legal tender, they'll only be able to use the face value. I suppose they might be able to haggle the price of a large purchase down a little but for everyday spending it seems the savings are small.
How anonymous is slashdot? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the logs aren't there, the subpoena doesn't hurt anything. So I ask what sort of logs does slashdot keep that could conceivably be used to track down an AC? Be imaginative in your answers (e.g. someone could try matching the HTTP access logs against the time the comment was posted(*)). Think like a smart technical cop who really wants to figure this out.
(*) There are probably too many accesses in a single minute to determine that reliably, but it may give you a candidate list that you could then correlate with other data. Like I said, be imaginative.
Re:Face Value vs Ore Value (Score:5, Interesting)
If I don't sell, however... its just face value, right?
In this story they go after the employer, regardless of the actions of the employees.
This is a very complicated subject that begs a lot of questions. Can my bank post a $100 loss for their mistake in giving me a $100 penny? Can they post a $100 win if they hand me a counterfeit $100?
IRS is right on this one (Score:5, Interesting)
What this guy did was essentially barter gold bullion that happened to be in coin form for labor.
Even if the US government is required to trade a $20 bill for your $20 gold piece, that does not establish the value of the gold piece for tax purposes.
Even a $20 bill can be worth more than $20 if it's a collector's item, such as one that's in an uncut block, one that's old and still in original condition, one that's very old, or one that's been autographed by hand by the Treasurer of the United States or Secretary of the Treasury whose signature appears on the bill.
If I pay my employees in collector-value currency, you bet the IRS will consider it a barter-for-labor arrangement and tax accordingly.
Re:Face value (Score:3, Interesting)
If I pay someone with a $20 bill and a lump of gold and then try to make the case that the employee only made $20, the IRS would come down on me like a ton of bricks and I would be laughed out of court.
In this case the goverment was stupid enough to stamp a $20 sign on a lump of gold, but that still doesn't change the fact that the employee receives a lot more wealth from me than $20 when taking the coin.
Re:The tax dodge itself seems spurious (Score:2, Interesting)
That being the case it would stand to reason that the person would attempt to sell the coins or trade them for paper dollars at the bank. It does not stand to reason that having been told they don't need to pay income tax on the coins, they would file their taxes that year and tell the IRS about any extra money they made off the transfer, at least assuming they're smart enough to figure out why the IRS doesn't need to know.
Re:Face Value vs Ore Value (Score:5, Interesting)
What they're terrified of is people going back to hard currency.
He's being made an example of, it's that simple.
It's a loophole that's protected by the US constitution. Gold and Silver are protected as legal currency and the federal government must supply and accept gold and silver tender. The only way around it is to amend the constitution - or scare people enough not to do it.
If it became popular may also get people asking difficult questions like why a $30 coin is really worth $1000, or more to the point why a $1 federal reserve note can only buy 1% of the value of a $30 dollar coin.
Such things are best not thought about by the plebs.
Re:Face Value vs Ore Value (Score:3, Interesting)
If it became popular may also get people asking difficult questions like why a $30 coin is really worth $1000, or more to the point why a $1 federal reserve note can only buy 1% of the value of a $30 dollar coin.
Back in the day, American Indian's used a form of currency called Wampum. So, what was it? Valuable metal? Nope. Useful stones? Nope. Anything functional or "intrinsically" valuable at all? Heck no. It was *seashells*, strung like beads and worn around the neck, valuable only because the manufacturer of these trinkets was limited to one small group of Indians, thus introducing artificial scarcity.
So, either those Indians understood something that those pesky "plebs" don't... or, maybe it's just you that's terribly confused. Believe it or not, currency is worth what people decide it's worth. That's it. After all, neither gold nor silver is terribly intrinsically valuable... we just think it is because, well, that's the tradition (not unlike, say, diamonds). I mean, sure, they make nice conductors, and have useful oxidation properties, but does that really make them worth what the market has priced them at (over $900 an ounce, in the case of gold)? I think not...
So, whether it's a piece of paper, a coin of some arbitrary metal, or a piece of seashell, it's meaningful as currency only because we, as a group, say it is.
Now, that said, some would claim that a currency based on some sort of limited resource (be it gold, silver, or <insert favorite thing here>) is a good idea, bringing up the ol' fiat currency boogeyman... 'course, those people don't understand the dangers of a fixed (or very slow growing) money supply in the world of expanding economies: deflation.
Re:i'll be the first to say.. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a huge gap between "they ought to" hurt someone and "I'm going to" hurt someone.
Wow, do I wish more people realized this. I was suspended in Highschool for this EXACT same thing. I "Threatened" another student who had been picking on me by saying I ought to kick his ass. When I pointed out to the vice principal that the choice of the words "ought to" was intentional because it implied I was not going to, she claimed there was no difference.
Re:Snail mail threat == Clear and present danger. (Score:1, Interesting)
The jury box is the last box in defense of freedom before the ammo box. Please prevent the ammo box needing to be used.
Keep your mouth shut about your ideas on jury nullification, unless you're already on the jury and you feel the circumstances warrant it, in which case it should be brought up to the other jurors in private while deciding.
Re:Per TFA... (Score:3, Interesting)
The employer is required to pay taxes on the amount he pays his employees. As long as the employees properly accounted for the extra income they obtained by selling their currency above its face value, they would not be violating the law (except perhaps for conspiracy or the like if they were more involved in the employer's scheme). The employer, however, clearly knew of the excess value beyond the face value and that needs to be reported.
It's not that hard, or uncommon, to force reasonable values on exchanges like this. In Massachusetts (and probably other states), when you buy a used car, your sales tax responsibility is based on the blue book value for a car of that age and condition, not the actual selling price. This prevents tax dodging by under-reporting the sale price and using some other transaction or gift to hide the actual price. Even beyond minimum wage, it would not be hard (nor unreasonable) to compare the value of the exchange with the going rate for the service in question. If it's way out of whack then asking why is quite sensible. In this case, it's absolutely clear that the intention is to hide wages, and that violates the law.
Re:Constitution (Score:3, Interesting)
Greetings and Salutations.
Actually, the writers of the American Constitution thought of this. The fact of the matter is that the Constitution is a document which defines what powers the citizens of the USA are willing to allow the government to have. Anything that is NOT mentioned is, explicitly, reserved for the Citizenry. So...as regards the Constitution, yea...if it is not specifically addressed, then it is allowed to the CITIZENS..not the government.
As for the rest of the tens of thousands of laws that we Americans have allowed ourselves to become burdened with...the same principle applies there too. Unless there is a law that specifically prohibits an act, then, that act is ALLOWED. For example, the original formulations for Coca Cola included a fairly goodly shot of cocaine. At the time, this was not addressed in law, so was perfectly legal. It gave Coke that refreshing zap! Now, as time progressed, certain drugs were prohibited by law...and vanished from Coke.
However, one worrisome evolution in America is the concept of "freedom zones", where protestors against a politician or event are corralled. It is usually fairly far away from the person or event in question, and, often means that the protestors are "out of sight and out of mind". There are no statutes covering this, and, I suspect any such laws would be overturned by the courts in short order. Now..my question here is this: Although this appears to fall into the area covered by your statement...is this a "good" thing, and is this where American should be going? I think not, and, I hope that others agree. It is this sort of attitude that ends up with a Citizenry cowering in fear under the thumb of a repressive government, and, is the rot that will destroy America in the long run, if it is allowed to continue and grow.
regards
dave mundt