Sign Up At irs.gov Before Crooks Do It For You 349
tsu doh nimh writes If you're an American and haven't yet created an account at irs.gov, you may want to take care of that before tax fraudsters create an account in your name and steal your personal and tax data in the process. Brian Krebs shows how easy it is for scammers to register an account in your name and view your current and past W2s and tax filings with the IRS, and tells the story of a New York man who — after receiving notice from the agency that someone had filed a phony return in his name — tried to get a copy of his transcript and found someone had already registered his SSN to an email address that wasn't his. Apparently, having a credit freeze prevents thieves from doing this, because the IRS relies on easily-guessed knowledge-based authentication questions from Equifax.
Hmm, Canada got this one right. (Score:5, Informative)
For years, CRA, the Canadian equivalent to the IRS, has been including Web Authentication Codes (WACs) with the annual notice of assessment, that is, their summary of your personal income tax submission, snail mailed to your address of record some weeks after you submit your personal tax return.
Your WAC changes every year. Without it, you cannot access your account in CRA's online systems.
And it isn't enough: You also need your SIN and the amount recorded on a particular line of your return (or notice, I cannot remember which).
Now here is where my memory gets hazy: Once you register for online access, I think they might send a one-time code to your address, which is required to activate your account.
The only way to subvert this system is to tamper with postal delivery, which means fraudsters must take specific, intentional action and break multiple federal laws (postal acts, the income tax act, etc.). There ain't no easy to guess stuff in the Canadian system. The bar is sufficiently high, the risks to fraudsters very high, i.e., hard time.
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Similar in Australia. Validation for online lodgement of taxes with the ATO (Aust. Tax Office) requires:
- Tax File Number (analogous to ITIN in US or SIN in Canada)
- Reference ID number from previous year's Notice of Assessment
- An amount paid or owed, from a previous year's NoA or other bill
I am not aware of any identity theft or security breach that has occurred through this system, which has been running for over a decade.
Theft of snail-mail. (Score:2)
There is a wide range of mailbox types in the US. A mailbox without a lock is common on houses, although apartment buildings tend to have locks on individual mailboxes, generally within a secure vestibule or foyer.
Some buildings have mail slots in or beside the front door that go into a secure area.
Whether the postal service leaves packages depends on how good they consider the area to be. If they worry someone is likely to take the package, some post offices won't leave one unless someone is home.
But you
Sign up? (Score:5, Informative)
I just went to www.irs.gov [irs.gov]
The advice to sign up there may be reasonable, but the words 'sign up' or anything semantically similar do not appear on the front page. It's not obvious where you would go to try to sign up.
It's not https either.
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It's "get my transcript" (from the article's link)
http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Get-Transcript
Re:Sign up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Request a transcript, like the author of the article did. However, bear in mind that if you register for an account, now all a fraudster needs to get into your irs.gov account is pwnership of your computer, which may be even easier to get than the personal information required to sign up.
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And all someone needs to do to steal your identity from your dead-tree tax paperwork is break into your house. So what?
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A computer can break into a million houses in a few minutes. That's so what.
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Probably the best possible outcome.
Re:Sign up? (Score:4, Informative)
Following the links in TFA, it leads me to here:
https://sa.www4.irs.gov/icce-c... [irs.gov]
I agree however, I would not even think of clicking a Get Transcripts button in order to create an IRS account.
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Re:Sign up? (Score:5, Interesting)
I did. That's how I found the place to sign up.
I signed up.
It gave password rules and validated the password on the fly with four green ticks, one against each rule (> 8 chars, special chars etc.). I used a 32 character password generated from my password manager.
The web page then errors out each time I tried to enter the password, saying it needed a valid password, even though the password was declared valid each time. In the end I got it to work when I reduced the password length below 20 characters. This may be due to the length, or some other difference, since my password manager was creating a different password each time I fiddled with the generator rules.
The whole thing sticks of basic programming incompetence.
Re:Sign up? (Score:4, Funny)
The whole thing stinks of basic programming incompetence
Yep, that's how you know you're in the right place.
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In the article, there is a link to sign up in the first paragraph.
My point was that a typical taxpayer might go there and not even know there's an option to sign up. Not everyone reads Slashdot. I only know because I read the Slashdot article.
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Right.
That's a classic model for attacking with a MITM. MITM the http page (because you can). Get a cert for say irs.taxservices.com instead of irs.gov On the switch to https, redirect to the irs.taxservices.com. Continue to MITM, proxying to irs.gov while the user enters all their secrets.
This is why the home page should be https.
they don't make it easy (Score:2)
I just now created an account. There's no login button on the top page -- you have to enter into some kind of transaction before it'll give you the option of logging in or creating a new account. (I chose to view a transcript for a past year.)
Once the process gets going, it's a little *too* straightforward. The information you need to create an account could easily be socially engineered. Current address, age, full name and SS# are all required information on any loan application, for instance. It then
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The 'hard' questions where things like 'what was your monthly payment on that loan'. There were 2 hard question, each with 4 choices. So that's 3 bits of information. You would expect to guess correctly 1 in 8 times. So if you have a database of SSNs and names and DOBs, you can succeed first time on 12.5% of them on average.
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Sorry. 4 bits. 1/16. 6.25%
Re:they don't make it easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry. 4 bits. 1/16. 6.25%
Which is still a *lot* of successes. Probably a better return on average than the "We are from The Microsoft and we are calling you because your computer is infested with the viruses" scam.
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Yeah, 'hard'. Take the street address and get the public property record from the purchase and assume a 30-year loan from the date of purchase. Not hard to estimate at ALL unless there was a substantial down payment.
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None of my questions were "hard". 3 were the street, city, and county and somewhere i had lived - and the correct options where all for one address. And the other question was what bank did you open a credit card with in 2005. So anywhere I had something shipped from that I paid via a credit card had all the answers in that one transaction.
and secure passwords are disallowed (Score:2)
I just created my account and had to try 5 times before it accepted a randomly-generated password I created programmatically. All 5 randomly generated passwords were validated by the on-page Javascript, but upon submitting the form they were rejected with no stated reason.
The key to finally getting one accepted one selecting a very short one. 47 characters was nixed, as was 32 and a few other, shorter ones. It finally accepted what I would consider to be a not-even-close-to-long-enough password for somethin
And everyone is innocent (Score:2)
From the article:
For starters, the woman who owned the bank account that received his phony refund — a student at a local Pennsylvania university — said she got the transfer after responding to a Craigslist ad for a moneymaking opportunity.
Kasper said the detective learned that money was deposited into her account, and that she sent the money out to locations in Nigeria via Western Union wire transfer, keeping some as a profit, and apparently never suspecting that she might be doing something illegal.
WTF?
How can anyone in college not suspect that sending money to strangers in Nigeria might somehow involve something illegal?
Is it possible that someone is telling fibs? Oh my stars, I'm feeling dizzy.
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Insert Einstein quote about infinite stupidity here.
Seriously, there are just some people that "smacking with a clue by 4" shouldn't just be a metaphor. If you accept a deposit into your account and forward it to Nigeria via Western Union, the punishment should be that the victim gets to use an actual 2x4 on you wherever he wants (in addition to any criminal penalties).
Alternative propos
"Knowledge-based" questions are really bad (Score:5, Informative)
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I treat such questions as passwords and never put real info in them. If they're basing it on info they think they already have, they should be slapped hard.
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This, so much this! It really annoys me that sooo many sites all ask questions from the same pool of stupid biographical data, thereby making guessing them almost trivial for people like vengeful ex wives and rogue IT staff at any random website that collects password reset questions.
Mother's maiden name? "handlebar mustache"
First pet's name? "fur
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Wow, so getting scammed by former co-workers is easy. As is anyone who knows how to Google LinkedIn.
Apparently doesn't work for 1040NR (Score:2)
Beautiful - take an organization that processes billions of dollars of other people's money, and add security not much better than any random web shop. I just went through the process - they ask for only one single piece of information that isn't easily available: the filing status on your last return. Of course, there aren't many choices, and you can try as many times as you want, so there's no penalty for guessing.
For laughs, they think your SSN is super secret, because the first two parts are in a passwo
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I'm a victim of identity theft and so my SSN is already out there (along with my name, address, and DOB). It's scary if they give a drop down with a small selection of N options and let you retry N times. I never thought that anyone could out-security theater the TSA, but it looks like the IRS has done it.
This happened to my brother (Score:2)
My mom called me and told me that my brother had this very thing happen to him. He had to fill out some paperwork, and now has to wait up to 180 days for his return.
I'm about to file,and I'm scared to find out if I'll have the same problem.
Never trust the government (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what you get with the lowest bidder.
Password ended in a '%'
Got this error:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, apache@%{Host}.rup.afsiep.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
We get the IRS We Deserve (Score:2)
It's convenient to complain about the IRS, but its flaws are a result of our own animus. Note the flaws of the agency are separate from those of the underlying tax code it has to administer, which it does not write (blame Congress for that).
We don't want to fund the IRS, so its budget keeps getting cut, while the list of demands placed upon it increases. Nobody likes the IRS, so it has difficulty attracting high-quality job applicants. Would you want to work for an agency constantly being berated for doi
Protecting the Criminals (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
My identity was stolen once. Someone got my name, DOB, SSN, and mailing address. They used this to open a credit card (*cough*Capital One*cough*) in my name. Due to a quirk, I was lucky and the card came to me, not them. Once I reported it as fraudulent (after having to argue that, no, my wife who was standing RIGHT THERE didn't open it under my name without telling me), they refused to tell me where the card was supposed to have gone to. They told me that this was because if they told me and I went and shot the person, they would be liable. Then, they proceeded to stonewall both me and the police until the investigation was dropped.
The lesson here? Companies (and government agencies) don't care about you. Fraud can be written off and is no big deal to them even if it ruins your credit rating and takes years of your life to fix. For them, that's just one line item in a million. I was lucky that I didn't lose anything and it was relatively easy to fix (close fraudulent account, freeze credit file), but others aren't so lucky.
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Replying to myself, I know, but please tell me I'm reading this wrong:
They identity the person who got the fraudulent $8.000+ tax return and who spent the money and the response is "Will you return the money? Pretty please with sugar on top?" If someone files a fraudulent tax return, collects the money, and spen
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My identity was stolen once
Not to belittle the experience you went through, but this would happen less if people fought back against the banks. Remember, there is no such thing as identify theft. Nobody can steal a "number" from you.
The actual crime that is taking place is bank fraud. If someone walks into a bank (or online), fraudulently represents themselves, and gets money from the bank - exactly what part of that are you liable for? An appropriate legal threat for any personal ramifications or credit file tampering from fra
Is this site legit? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except in this case, you can't; not without abolishing the IRS, in which case your desire to protect yourself and your privacy is right-wing lunacy. Right?
Ah, who is responsible for introducing this problem on the irs.gov website?
Now you have identified the organization responsible for fixing the damn thing.
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Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:5, Insightful)
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yeah, but that way lies a long list of which food, clothing and medical expenses are worthy of being tax exempt and which, being "obviously" luxuries, need not be.
Wouldn't it be easier to tax everything and rebate minimum cost of living expenses?
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10% flat sales tax on everything (consumption tax, also applied at borders)
I'm fine with that, my imported megayacht never crosses the border. Here's $5 for the rubber dinghy I come ashore in.
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We have that in canada, and it really is confusing on what is taxable and what isnt.
"Basic" groceries are not taxable. But then there are some items that wouldn't be considered basic groceries that are exempt from tax (such as an unbaked pizza from the grocery store, but a frozen pizza is taxable).
https://www.gov.mb.ca/finance/... [gov.mb.ca]
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You know exactly how that would go.
GM would start producing luxury cars made out of "food."
Cable boxes would come with heart rate monitors so cable TV could be considered a "medical expense."
Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Taxing "profit" ? Surely you jest...
How about a "consumption tax" that exempted food, clothing and medical expenses? Everything else would be subject to a sales tax.
Because as soon as you have an exemption, politics will put severe pressure to add more excemptions. This is why the Fair Tax plan just gives everyone a rebate based on typical low income consumption of essentials but sales taxes everything.
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My problem with the Fair Tax proposal is the rebate checks.
It teaches stupid people that the Government gives them money every month. They can prove it too, waves rebate check
All food bought in stores, not restaurants, not taxed
All clothing items that cost less than $100, not taxed
All health care, not taxed.
Everything else, taxed. Who cares if someone has $20 billion in the bank, if every time they spend any of it, it gets taxed.
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Also, I'd link the tax to last year's budget. There'd never be another deficit. The tax will go up or down 1% or whatever to make the lines always match.
Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:5, Informative)
On the contrary, irresponsible tax cuts without commensurate decreases in spending have resulted in the largest debt in the history of mankind.
We could talk about the "coincidence" that said tax cuts disproportionally favored the wealthy (i.e., they made the tax less progressive), and that spending actually increased and most of that increase was for war.... but you don't really want to admit that, do you?
It's such an inconvenient fact that deficits tend to drop due to the policies of liberals and rise due to the policies of [neo-]conservatives, when [neo-]conservatives desperately try to lie and claim it's the other way around...
Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:5, Informative)
> BTW, the deficit reductions under Clinton were the direct result of the policies of Reagan and Gingrich.
Bullshit. The Clinton surplus was created by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which every single Republican in congress voted against [wikipedia.org].
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The table at your link shows Public Debt Outstanding, not Debt Held by the Public. The former includes intragovernmental holdings. For example, the surplus gathers by Social Security counts as against the Public Debt Outstanding. If the Social Security surplus is greater than the Federal Budget surplus, the Public Debt Outstanding will increase.
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Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel so sorry for all those wealthy people bearing such a terrible economic burden. If the burden gets too bad though, there is a solution. They can always just forfeit their income and live the carefree, unburdened life of the poor.
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I'm trying to come up with a good argument that taxing production is more easily made progressive than taxing consumption, but now I'm not sure that's right. After all, we do vary taxes for different goods already. States with sales tax generally exclude basic groceries, and luxury taxes can target true nonessentials and can shape industries. I dunno. Arguments on either side?
Fuck. Did a slashdot post just make me think and change my opinion? What is this world coming to?
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This depends on what you mean by "progressive".
A consumption-based tax is very simple and easy to tie to consumption, by attaching it to goods as we already do with sales tax. That matches well with the definition of "progressive" that refers to having more tax come from those who use more.
Unfortunately, if you're looking for a "progressive" definition related to making progress in the areas of social justice and economic fairness, consumption taxes are disproportionately burdensome on lower-income demograp
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Wherever you are (you don't say), I suspect your sales tax on groceries is more the exception than the rule. For just one example, Nevada doesn't tax groceries. If you're paying tax on a grocery-store purchase, it's for (1) non-food items (such as c
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Missouri is one. I'm not sure the specifics, but typically you'll see a "Tax1" and "Tax2" on the receipt. Most cities do not exempt anything, but the state sales tax is exempted from basic groceries. It's not usually itemized what gets what taxes, but if you buy a $1 grocery item, you'll often find that the total is $1.04, instead of $1.08 (random examples based on local municipality taxes). The city tax is still charged, but the state tax isn't.
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Washington state. http://dor.wa.gov/content/Find... [wa.gov]
For example: "Sales of food and food ingredients are exempt from retail sales tax. However, prepared foods, dietary supplements, and soft drinks are taxable."
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Georgia makes such a distinction. If you go to a supermarket and buy the ingredients to make a sandwich they'll be taxed at something like 2%, but if you have the people at the supermarket's deli counter make you a sandwich it'll get taxed at something like 7%. If you buy both, your receipt will show the 2% tax applied to the subtotal of the sandwich ingredients and 7% tax applied to the subtotal of the prepared food. (In GA, taxes rates are also set on a city and county basis, so the actual numbers may var
Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, income tax is production tax, not consumption tax, so you've got your thinking backwards to begin with.
Second, just because the current implementation of the income tax is riddled with loopholes and power-grubbing statist bullshit, doesn't mean it has to be. A progressive income tax could be as simple as setting tax rate = f(income) where f(income) is a sigmoid curve [wikipedia.org] such that f($0) = 0% and the limit as income approaches infinity is 100%. Politicians would fight over the parameters, of course, and most people would need a slightly fancier calculator to compute it, but the end result would fit on a page.
In contrast, to make a sales tax progressive it must be complicated, because somebody has to decide which goods people at each income level should be "allowed" to afford. In contrast, a simple sales tax where all goods are taxed at the same rate would be inherently regressive because low-income people spend 100% of their income buying stuff while high-income people don't.
Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but to go along with the original AC's premise about abolishing the IRS, I have to tell those that want to 'get rid of the IRS' that you'd need the IRS even under there scheme. As long as the government is collecting taxes, it needs to have a department collecting them.
Department of War, Department of Defense, same difference. Ditto with whatever you 'replace' the IRS with.
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So say what you mean. When someone says one thing but then says "no, actually I mean this rather different thing" we accuse them of "spin" if they are a politician and "lying" if they are anyone else.
Also, how would the new IRS differ? What policies of the current IRS do you think should be changed? Because it seems to me that as long as someone has to enforce tax collection, they have to look much like the current IRS.
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Yea, the working class parents of four should pay more taxes than the DINK's that make 7 figures and save it all.
Seems like a very non-brain-dead policy.
Actually it's the way we are going anyway. Fees, fines, and local taxes keep going up to support the tax cuts given to businesses and the ultra-rich. It's about as regressive as you can get.
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Problem is they don't consume. People will just buy in Canada online and ship it after purchase. Recession plus no revenue. Poor people support economy. You rich only buy so many toasters and will be laid off
Tax something that correlates strongly (Score:2)
How do you expect people to measure their consumption of goods such as public roadways?
Traditionally that is done via a fuel tax. Usage of the roads correlates strongly with the amount of fuel consumed. Lots of public goods can be tracked with a good that correlates strongly with the use of the public good.
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And that method is starting to fall apart as high efficiency and alternative fuel vehicles become more common.
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How do you expect people to measure their consumption of goods such as public roadways?
Hardly matters. Commercial trucks do all the damage to roads and that's the reason for the upkeep expenses. But that "stimulates the economy" too much for anyone to try to go after more money from them.
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What, they don't use more gas / pay more gas tax than the rest of us?
Not in proportion to the wear on the roadway they produce. I think the roadway wear goes as either the square or the cube of the weight per axle, and the big trucks weigh a lot more per axle. Nope - looks like it is a fourth power relationship:
"Road damage rises steeply with axle weight, and is estimated "as a rule of thumb... for reasonably strong pavement surfaces" to be proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It looks like the max axle weight is something lik
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I guess you'd just pay for them out of the general fund that the sales tax goes into. Consumption tax doesn't map 1:1 for everything.
Probably you still run into the same issues as normal if your consumption tax is progressive though. In a low income area where people are mostly spending their money on non-taxed life essentials, there's not much funding for infrastructure, but in a place with a lot of big spenders and high luxury taxes, there's ample funding that might not be needed. Maybe you can say tha
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How about local retail pitches in to make sure they can get customers, and local employers pitch in to make sure people can commute--oh look, pretty soon everyone's paying. Much like public education, a lot of people benefit without realizing it.
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On public education, uh, yes it does benefit everyone even if not everyone attends. Not every family can afford private school or the time to homeschool, but everyone is going to wind up buying gas or groceries from someone who went through public school at the very least, driving on a bridge built by someone who went to a public university, seeing a doctor who went to a partially state funded med school.
You could say the same thing about cheap/free public access to healthcare or mental health services--ma
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Except, of course, for a custom car that's mostly driven on private roads and tracks for exhibition, but the owner keeps it street-legal just in case he wants to drive it publicly.
Then there's also the uneven usage for cars pulling trailers, which don't have odometers.
Then there are people whose car may not be registered in the same state as the majority of their driving, which is legal in some circumstances.
These are some easy examples. All this idea does is shift the problems from one easily-identified gr
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Let the seller do the paperwork. It would be much better still to make the IRS do the paperwork. After all, they are supposed to be a service.
And you want the IRS to have a record of every exchange of payment for goods or services? Every one? Not even the states currently have that, they get aggregate data from the sellers. Do you realize the size of the federal government system necessary to track and gather and manage all that data?
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Who decides what I OWN is worth?
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Who decides what I OWN is worth?
The government will happily give you an estimate. The real answer will come from the auctioneer when he sells off your house that the government has confiscated to pay off whatever taxes they think you owe on it. If he's good at his job and the right people show up, boy is your tax bill going to be huge. And if the government estimate of what it is worth is a bit too high, well, you'll get a bit of the money from the sale. Enough to rent someplace nice down by the tracks, probably. Enjoy what we let you ha
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Actually ultra conservative economist mentioned he hates every tax.
However a real estate tax is most fair and predictable with the least amount of impact
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Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS (Score:5, Insightful)
If you tax people on what they earn, people declare certain things as 'not an earning'.
Yes, the People through their elected representatives who write and pass the tax legislation. It's not like Joe Smith gets to decide that this year's salary is "not an earning" all on his own.
If you tax people on what they OWN, then you don't screw over anyone.
Except people who plan ahead for the future and save their money so they have something to live on when they retire. You screw over people who work hard and provide a good house and nice things for their family. When you tax what people own, you tax it this year, and then you tax it again next year, and then again next year... which pretty much screws EVERYONE -- except those who save nothing and live hand to mouth. And creates more of those as the guy who owns the nice house has to scrape up yet another federal tax to keep it, even if he's lost his job and has zero income.
Taxing ownership is a ruse to cover class envy, nothing more. Just how much of what people own should the government take away from them every year (in addition to the effects of inflation and depreciation that reduce the actual values)? Ten percent? Twelve? Just five?
Do you tax retirement plans that people haven't yet vested in, or haven't yet received? Who "owns" that money?
Do you target family farms for enforcement, so they have to come up with ten percent of the value of the farm every year in taxes? Do you care if that shuts them down because they've had to sell it off to pay the taxes?
and if you can't pay the taxes on it you shouldn't buy it.
Another voice telling people what they should and shouldn't buy. That house you bought ten years ago when you had that good job, and now you're unemployed and cannot afford the yearly federal "gurps" tax on it? You shouldn't have bought it. You don't deserve it if you can't afford to pay the taxes on it today. We know, you worked hard all your life and saved up to buy it, but we simply don't care. The fact that local property taxes can do that to someone is bad enough, you want to add a federal tax on top to make it happen sooner and more often?
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Normal people have mortgages. If they can't afford the house, they have to sell it. That's the way the world works.
As for on top of, I did not say that. I want a federal property tax to replace existing federal taxes.
As for how much tax 5% property tax (on everything excluding IRAs and 1 home of upto 200K value) per year would allow us to totally remove all federal income tax
If you make it 2% that only applied if
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Taxing people based on what they own, instead of what they earn or consume, is a terrible idea that discourages long-term investment in durable goods and promotes spending your income as soon as possible.
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Sometimes people accuse progressives of wanting to punish success, to hurt the rich just for the sake of hurting. Your plan is why people say stuff like that.
In practice, when individual states start "taxing millionaires", the millionaires move to different states. We're just looking for a way to fund the government here, as a means to the end of improving everyone's standard of living. A plan that would cause the successful to move elsewhere might raise some funds for a while, but is a terrible long-ter
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We're just looking for a way to fund the government here, as a means to the end of improving everyone's standard of living.
The federal tax system long ago ceased to be a way to simply fund the necessary government services and turned into a vehicle for large scale social engineering. Give tax breaks for things "we" want people to do, put more taxes on things "we" don't want them doing. When you look at the things "we" have decided to tax and not tax, you don't get a clear indication that "we" have everyone's improved standard of living in mind.
A plan that would cause the successful to move elsewhere might raise some funds for a while, but is a terrible long-term strategy for improving standard of living.
Yep. But as long as it prevents the successful from having an unhindered better s
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But as long as it prevents the successful from having an unhindered better standard of living than everyone else, it's a win.
Since the rest of your post seems sane, I'm just assuming my sarcasm detector is on the fritz again with this line.
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Citation needed. I hear this a lot but never seem to hear any evidence of it.
The US used to have a maximum tax rate of over 90%, but fewer millionaires left the country than now when the tax rates are historically very low.
I'm rather happy that those who make more (including me, though I'm nowhere near rich) pay a higher percentage than those who make less. Another percent tax on me will not change much, though I may go out to eat less or have fewer options on my new motorcycle. Another percent on people
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Okay, maximum tax used to be higher, and over here I agree that it should be again, but let's have a little context. Weren't those massive rates when we had World Wars going on? And when we had less globalization and less other places for the rich to move to?
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Not to worry. I don't own anything; my house and cars are owned by KqsCo and leased to me for a nominal fee. And since they are business expenses for the company...
If you assume that there is any plan which cannot be gamed, you don't have enough imagination.
I'm fine with a combination of income, sales, business and property taxes. You may be able to avoid one of them, but avoiding all of them at the same time may be more expensive than paying the damn taxes.
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The purchase of 10000 shares of company X, or even the outright purchase of a corner bicycle shop, could very well be considered "consumption". Granted this class of "consumption" could be given special tax status (much like capital gains already does) due to the risk inherent and the general societal desire to encourage this kind of investment. Profit would be gravy if we no longer tax income, and losses could be weighted against future purchase
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we fully intend to follow Obama's lead and use the IRS as a weapon against our enemies domestic and domestic.
Obama's lead? If you think he started this, you must be new around here (planet earth).
Hell already froze over. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe, some day, Congress will actually fix some of the real fucking problems we have, with having a pseudo, tech. intergrated Government. And maybe, Hell will actually freeze over!
I hear Hell already froze over - several decades ago.
It was a particularly cold snap during winter in Michigan, with sub-zero (farenheit) temperatures. The expanding ice blew out a small (millpond-ish) dam. The water under the ice rushed down the river and overflowed it, pouring down the main street of the little village of Hell, Michigan. It was several inches deep when it slowed enough that the extreme cold froze it solid.
Since then a lot of the stuff that was waiting for Hell to freeze over has been happeng. That explains the last several decades nicely, eh? B-)
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Well it's working, because I don't appear to have any choice.
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Or we could have just gone to the doctor and paid out of pocket, without having to pay a middle layer to deny the claim.
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I just did it successfully, after getting the error you got the first time through. You're right, the website does not clearly have a place to log in -- you have to request a document or initiate a payment in order to get the login screen, wherein you can also create an account. In defense of OP, this may be the reason they did not include a link to a login page -- there doesn't appear to be one.
But to your point, there seems to be a bug in the form, where if you put any punctuation or special characters