Imagine you have lost your job but fortunately you have some savings. It’s tight but you are paying your bills, including your mortgage, on time. You don’t know how long you will be able to carry on this way but so far you are just keeping your head above water. Surprise! You have made yourself a target of the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS is curious just how you can keep up your payments with a drastic cut in income. Assuming people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, the IRS suspects skullduggery if your reported income is inconsistent with your expenditures. Being financially responsible now is a red flag to the government. If they can’t hear you cry, they may suspect you have been understating your income, some of which may come from sources other than your main job.
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Apparently, the best way to keep the IRS off your back these days is to be late with your credit cards, be slow paying your mortgage, avoid conspicuous consumption, and apply for some kind of government benefits.
I hear good things about government cheese.
You may have refinanced your house, received an inheritance, or have squirreled away some savings. That would account for your apparent prosperity in the face of economic adversity like a job loss. Prove all that to the IRS and you’re probably home free.
But in the land of Obama, nobody is supposed to be so independent, or have sufficient resources, to carry on during times of adversity. If you do, the IRS wants to know how you did that. If you have been prudent enough to accumulate a rainy day fund, if you have “fed the pig,” you may find your wealth being spread around to your less prudent neighbors. It is very much akin to the Aesop fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”
The Obama administration is hostile to Americans who provide for themselves. Its attitude is “if anybody is suffering, everybody should be suffering.” And if you’re not, they want to know why not.
No matter how carefully you have complied with the laws, you can still become a target if you look richer than you should, considering your income, your occupation, and several other factors IRS would not disclose.
Another event that might surprise you by triggering an audit includes your participation in the government’s Cash for Clunkers program. The opinion of the government is that by participating you have exposed all your financial records to the IRS.
Most auto dealers did not pass on to their customers a warning the IRS gave them that their computers were now considered to be part of the federal computer system and were the property of the government. Will this stand up in court? Probably not. It seems vastly overreaching. But do you want to be the one who brings it into court?
All Internet service providers (ISPs) are now required to keep records of all their customers’ computer connections. (Did your ISP notify you of this?)
Every e-mail you send or receive, every website you visit must be preserved for government inspection. Most search engines preserve their records for years. What can this tell them? Who you correspond with, what you correspond about, what subjects interest you. For instance, if you do a Google search for sources of chemicals, you might attract the interest of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the Secret Service.
One person who read one of the stimulus bills discovered a provision for the creation of a personal health profile that will be under the control of a National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. It is a method they will have to be certain your doctor is giving you the service they approved for you, neither more nor less.
Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.newflashpoint.com.
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