Posted on 04/06/2013 9:38:07 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
IRS checking out your Facebook and Twitter to help keep you honest
You have less than two weeks to file your taxes and your Facebook or Twitter accounts could end up getting you in big trouble with the IRS.
They're looking for tax cheaters. The IRS has been known to check car records, employment documents and other public records. Now, your social media page is on that list too.
“I think that’s a little bit ridiculous,” replied one person we talked to.
Some of the people we talked to were surprised.
“I think it’s still an invasion of privacy,” commented Ken Moses. “You wouldn’t want the IRS looking into your profile to see how much money you make or anything else like that.”
Others see that times have changed and expect this from the government.
“I’m not surprised at all. I feel like they’ll do anything to just get something out of you,” Jesus Guzman commented.
The IRS has a 38-page training manual on how agents can use the Internet. The training manual says that IRS agents, “(You) are required to conduct Internet searches to determine taxpayer ecommerce activities. Generally, (you) IRS Agents are allowed to review information from publicly accessible, unrestricted websites.”
The manual continued to speak about social media specifically, saying, “Employees may not use either their correct identification information or false identification information to become "friends" to gain access to the taxpayer's social network site.”
That means that IRS agents can only view your profile if you have your privacy settings set to public.
Most of the people we talked to understood the idea, but weren’t too fond of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at whptv.com ...
"IRS checking out your Facebook and Twitter to 'HELP' keep you honest" Thanks, but no thanks ... I require no "help" to be honest!
Another reason never to post any personal information on Facebook or Twitter.
I don’t like this at all, but I also get the giggles when someone says it is an “invasion of privacy”. Facebook and Twitter are not private. Nothing you write online is really.
If you’re dumb enough to try tax evasion and then post incriminating evidence on social media, you deserve to go to jail.
Another reason not to have an FB or Twitter account.
Fixed it.
Who is checking out the IRS to keep them honest?
The IRS won’t finger the people who are in the country illegally, and who are cheating the govt of billions, but they will chase down the people who maybe have a few more bucks income than they say. IF the IRS, SSA and ICE compared notes we could have the illegals out of work pronto..but no.
Explain, if you would please, how posting at FB or twit is any different than posting at FreeRepublic? It seems to me that that posting here would be more risky because it caters to conservatives (the ideological enemies of the current regime) than the other two.
Like clockwork, every April the IRS puts out some scary story just as those later filers and procrastinators are working on their taxes.
Do they expect us to believe they have roomfuls of agents trolling social media in the hope of finding tons of cheats?
They are all part of the Democrat rat pack.
Maybe because one doesn’t normally post the most intimate details of their boring lives on FR.
It’s not an “invasion of privacy” if you put it out in public.
So if you don’t want the IRS to know about something, don’t publish it on the internet.
Fortunately, I’m not on FB & I don’t tweet
I don’t use Facebook and I don’t use Twitter and life is just fine.
posting political views seems even more dangerous... however, our names are not readily available such as it works with FB... but if i google bgi11, i come up with a bunch of stuff... and when i google latina4dubya, i find a lot of my comments that i posted here on FR... it is all out there... btw--i love using FB...
My wife's business got audited last December (they found nothing). The agent admitted to us that the difference between her business income and our "apparent" lifestyle based on her Facebook posts is one of the things that prompted the audit. And since she has her postings set to "Private", this guy was able to go right around that with no problem.
I'd say they either have roomfuls of agents looking at things they aren't supposed to or they are offering rewards to tipsters and accessing suspect profiles through the tipster's Facebook login.
Time to unfriend every left-leaning person you know...
IRS aside, if you don’t want something seen, then don’t set it to public on Facebook.
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