Will The IRS Give Back Tainted Money?

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | 08/09/02 | El Rushbo

[Libloather]

Will The IRS Give Back Tainted Money?

The U.S. government has a whole bunch of tainted money that came in as the result of illegal accounting practices. Are we going to see that money refunded to the shareholders, perhaps? We'll see a snowball in hell before that happens.

Reuters reported that, "Bankrupt telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc. said on Thursday an internal audit of its books back to 1999 has turned up another $3.3 billion in improperly recorded earnings and said it may take a writedown of $50.6 billion."

Did this company ever make any money? Was there ever any success? Think of the tax refund that they're going to get! "Rush, there's not going to be any tax refund. There was a little fraud there." Maybe that's true, but think of this. They paid taxes on some of this and didn't report the losses. Is the I.R.S. going to give back any of its tainted money from all of these phony profits?

You folks at Enron, the federal government is where you ought to be going. The federal government has all your money in the form of taxes paid by Enron, taxes they shouldn't have paid because there wasn't a profit. So are the feds going to give back their ill-gotten gains that derived from accounting tricks? Never, but I think you ought to be thinking that way instead of focusing on people you're never going to get it back from.

[Libloather]

These companies went belly-up while STILL paying their taxes? Wouldn't the Libdem/Chicoms want to use them as examples of what to do?

[dcwusmc]

Nice thought-bump!

[Torie]

The company can always file amended returns (back 3 years I think). Somehow though I suspect that the taxable income of the company was not the same as the reported income. Rushbo is shooting from the hip, or someone is.

[Larry Lucido]

I'm sure the bankruptcy trustee will look to get back every overpayment to which the bankruptcy estate is entitled.

[Pelham]

Unless Rush examined the 10k filings of these companies there is no way to know if they paid taxes on these phantom earnings. There's no evidence that either company paid taxes on their fraudulent earnings. Rush is just talking out of his hat.

For one thing, Enron created a host of subsidiaries in offshore tax havens- and phantom earnings recorded in these subs didn't pay taxes to the Treasury.

Worldcom grew by taking over smaller companies using the "supermoney" of its common stock- and such takeovers give the parent company plenty of tax offsets from any losses on the books of the acquired company.

[Libloather]

I'm sure the bankruptcy trustee will look to get back every overpayment to which the bankruptcy estate is entitled.

That's fine. What I don't understand - a company falsifies reports which would kick in MASSIVE CEO bonus programs that had to be paid out when there was hardly any loot available. That company would also have to cover the taxes on the same falsification.

How long would they think they could get away with paying out more than what was coming in - and why did SO many companies all do the same thing - all at the same time?

[Clinging Bitterly]

> These companies went belly-up while STILL paying their taxes?

Since the actors (most of them) are alive, it's safe to assume they were, since all living people and a decent share of dead ones do, in fact, pay taxes.

To the extent that it's stolen money, it ought to be returned to it's rightful owners. Those would be, in large part, 401K accounts.

The dollar amount that has disappeared from my 401K account is roughly equivalent to all that has been contributed, plus all earnings, since about 1999. It appears that the IRS is in posession of at least a small part of it, and yeah, I'd like it back.

Of course if any cases of fraudulent accounting practices are proven in court, there will be fines and asset siezures and so forth. 100% of those dollars will go to the government, which is not an injured party here, so the government will be unjustly enriched with even more of the money that has been stolen from my retirement funds.

We the investors get shafted all the way up the patootie no matter how this plays out.

Dave in Eugene

[CyberAnt]

I hope ya'll aren't holdin' yer breath!!

[Libloather]

Should I let go now?

[CyberAnt]

Oh yes, please - I wouldn't want to see the IRS convicted of any wrongdoing /sarcasm.

[gunnedah]

I say that companies only followed the lead of the US Government.Our government perpetuates a fraud daily it has cooked the books for years on its citizens and companies follow the lead.Return all company taxes and while your at it return all of the taxes collected from US citizens for the fraud you have committed on us.

[Libloather]

Bump...