Posted on 09/03/2012 6:30:02 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
“The IRS ought to have been charged with frivolous prosecution.”
This is the norm. They take unreasonable positions and the punishment is that you must defend against them. The system is the punishment.
I have another IRS audit underway right now. I showed the agent all of the errors in her work and agreed to disagree on the unbased assumptions creating assessments. It is very much a system where they make accusations and you must prove them wrong. You are NOT innocent until proven guilty. My client is between a rock and a hard place!
I’ll admit, I do end up with the nightmare cases after other CPAs have screwed them up. These are not returns I have prepared. I’ve even filed amended returns after the audit case was closed and paid, just to have the audit reopened and get my clients their money back. As long as the statute of limitations has not expired they are still open game.
I’m trying desperately to retire and get out of this work, but feel sorry for these people and keep getting sucked back into it.
“But in no way should the cost of their savings in labor by using cheap labor performed by immigrants (illegal and other) be passed onto taxpayers, which is what happens. I’ll pay more for blueberries if they are picked in a way that doesn’t cost me in taxes. “
Do you shop at Walmart?
Even though they are expensive, buy the mechanical pickers. They are cheaper than being extorted by the Labor Dept. goons who can put you out of business.
Of course, that means the human pickers will be going on welfare, but this government wants as many people dependent on Big Government as possible.
At least somebody gets it, here. It's just one step down from government employees torturing a confession from a citizen for the benefit of their fellow Marxists.
“The point here is the government used extortion to force a private company to pay a fee and sign an admission of guilt with their only other option being to let their crop spoil and go out of business.”
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I understand what you are saying about this case, but I believe the core of this issue is bigger than this case. It is about businesses and farmers that have historically used immigrants (that we all end up subsidizing) so they can get artificially cheap labor instead of using mechanization.
Both Parties have never seen an immigrant (sometimes illegal too)that saved business interests money that they didn’t support. They don’t care that the associated costs end up being paid by society.
Cheap labor always ends up with other costs to society. As an example go back to the days when farmers in the south imported slaves so they could save money. They saved money but it ended up costing Americans with a civil war etc..
The policy continues today but has expanded beyond farmers.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/issues/taxpayer-burden.html
Greg Ditchen, the farm owner, said he’s never been in trouble before and may use only mechanized harvesters in the future.
“It’s not the labor,” he said, “it’s the people who come out and tell us we’re doing wrong.”
So in the future to avoid these heavy-handed tactics Farmers will be employing no “migrant labor”.
Where I currently live, the only “short-term labor I see farmers hiring is for the tobacco crops, which are by their nature very labor intensive.
On the other hand most of the other farmers which are predominantly Amish only use Family labor and machinery. And by family I don’t mean just their own children I mean Brothers and Cousins etc. If an “English” is hired it’s because they are well known to the farmer and are very trustworthy.
I took seven cases to Federal Tax Count and walked in with two pizza boxes taped shut to show why they were wrong. They used a thin crust pizza recipe and my client made Sicilian pizzas. Their assumption cost my clients over $50,000 just to prove they were right. Your logic does not follow. The agent calculated the amount of flour on the (client's) recipe. You claim the pizza is thin crust. So what? And what's with taping the pizza box shut? Showmanship. Where is the argument?
“Why are today’s kids so spoiled they won’t accept this as a stepping stone job? It surely is not ignoble.”
Here in NJ illegals are stealing jobs the employers don’t want to pay Americans (kids or adults) to do. Americans require such things as workers compensation insurance, overtime pay, and lunch breaks that just get in the way...
“If a farmer can’t get a legal worker (a high school kid or an adult) to work in their fields, then they need to either raise the wages, or start using mechanized pickers.”
That’s right; instead, companies do an end-run around “the market”. Any American earning over $30K has forces at work either sending their job overseas or importing immigrants (legal or otherwise) to do it. That is the stark reality facing the American middle class today, and it won’t be improving any time soon. The best hope for the American worker is a nuclear war between India and China and a conventional war between Mexico and the Philippines; nothing against those people, but that’s the truth.
My case was similar to the one in the article sourcing this post. The government used an assumed formula and based upon that formula they calculated an expected production per hour and used that to determine a rate per hour per employee worked. They compared that to the recorded figures to assess deficiency.
In my case, the government used an assumed formula (recipe) and utilizing quantity of one ingredient in the recipe, they multiplied it through to calculate projected gross receipts and then compared it to recorded receipts to determine a deficiency. Problem is, they used a thin crust recipe which yields a higher revenue per pound of flour used than a Sicilian pizza. While the price of the Sicilian pie is slightly higher, it is not proportionately higher based upon flour differential. I handed the four U S Treasury attorneys the two boxes taped shut so they would notice the weight differential and ask why. The experience spoke for itself and is better than just logically explaining it. Such graphic illustrations speak volumes when you are trying to convince other people, especially juries that you are correct and the opposition is wrong.
I’ve been doing this for over thirty years, quite successfully even where others have failed.
The problem is that the judicial system protects itself and its underlings. I have a tax case in state court right now that is absolutely absurd and it has already been rejected by two inter department revenue hearing boards who just rubber stamped their revenue officers despite the evidence presented. The last hearing board voted against me 3:2 and the hearing board had no idea what they were doing. They didn’t even know their own laws. I will easily win in appeal but it will cost $$$ to get there. This is the reason many attorneys will wave district court cases to county court and refer to the lower level courts as Mickey Mouse Courts.
It is getting harder to get a fair shake in the bureaucratic process. The system is the punishment. I watch the little guys get stomped on and abused constantly. It’s sad.
A close friend of mine employs students in an academic training agricultural environment. The students are through a program at a major university. Last week I complimented him on the fine work ethic I observed in his student employees, most whom are visiting from the Eastern European Countries.
He said that was true five years ago, but not today. It used to be they would want all the overtime they could get. Today they don’t want to work over forty hrs per week, and often complain that they don’t want to work more than 25 hrs or they will lose their food stamps! The last three years has poisoned a lot of workers.
Perhaps your most virtuous move would be in lending a hand to raising up a successor to take up the cudgel against IRS weirdness like that. At least tax courts are available now and they usually come to sensible conclusions. But the IRS plays games hoping the target will find it too burdensome to appear in a tax court.
The answer will have to include politics. This is federal taxes being discussed, or state taxes? The appropriate legislatures will need to be engaged.
“But the IRS plays games hoping the target will find it too burdensome to appear in a tax court.”
Very True......
“The last three years has poisoned a lot of workers.”
Particularly young ones; if all of the products hawked on TV (as well as homes and families) are beyond their reach anyway, what is the point? I’m sure this is speeding up the demographic nightmare that has been unfolding in this country for the past decades.
I just hope there are enough voters that miss the whole concept of “discretionary income” enough to toss Obama.
Agree completely. It is time to focus on issues that will create a more prosperous USA that has a real economic base that provides jobs where they can send their kids to college and serve as assets to society instead of liabilities. We need much more in our USA economy than bankers, Wall St financiers and Wal-Mart. The expansion of both have been more negative than a positive for our long term mainstream economy.
Massive immigration that can not assimilate (legal and other) has hurt the creation of a stronger economy. It is pushed by elites of both Parties, and is intended to keep American wages depressed, change our culture and overpopulate the country.
“It is pushed by elites of both Parties, and is intended to keep American wages depressed, change our culture and overpopulate the country.”
I agree with everything except the overpopulate bit; while at this point it is obvious that we don’t need the immigration (due to the high unemployment), the fact is that Social Security and other programs don’t work unless the “contributing” population is growing (either naturally or as we’re seeing with the open borders). Western Europe is watching the socialist utopias collapse because the contributing segment of the population has probably already been eclipsed by the “takers”. They import immigrants, but the costs to businesses of the current batch of “takers” makes hiring them impractical (similar to what is happening here).
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