-=> On 11-15-97  18:22, Roy J. Tellason did testify and affirm <=-
-=> to Robert Craft concerning IRS <=-
 
 RJT> How do we *know* what the level of compliance is,  aside from
 RJT> what they're telling us?
 
 RC> Legally or illegally? 
 
 RC> Legally, the only way to successfully *not* comply is to not 
 RC> file AND have a employers/clients who don't report the income 
 RC> paid to you - with the usual risk of a secret held by two 
 RC> people. Even then, one can get caught in a random audit. Other 
 RC> than that, it's probably a matter of estimates, based on audit 
 RC> findings. Remember, they do apparently have an audit profile 
 RC> which is apparently fairly accurate.
 
 RC> Illegally, the accuracy is limited only by data entry. All that 
 RC> needs be done obtain a list of all active SSAN's from the 
 RC> Social Security Administration and compare that list with the 
 RC> SSAN's on all filed returns. If an active SSAN doesn't show as 
 RC> a taxpayer, taxpayer dependent, Social Security recipient or 
 RC> Medicaid recipient, then it would be assumed that they are 
 RC> participating in a black market economy and not filing income 
 RC> taxes.
 
 RC> However, the IRS is expressly forbidden from doing the
 RC> latter. [ grain of salt for consumption -> * ]
 RJT> Why would your SSN be active if you're not participating in
 RJT> the system at all? 
By "active", I mean assigned to a living citizen which,
currently means between age 1 and death. 
 RJT> There was a time some years back when I ran a business out
 RJT> of my house. It didn't do a whole lot of business, and in
 RJT> fact there were a number of times when I barely broke even.
 RJT> I was lucky enough to have really minimal expenses in those
 RJT> days, though. I didn't pay taxes, didn't file any social
 RJT> security either --
But, you did file a return, didn't you?
 RJT> basically because I wasn't making any money. Eventually I
 RJT> turned to other kinds of work, which put me back into the
 RJT> more "normal" ways of doing things... 
... Ever notice how many taglines originated from Robert Heinlein?
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- PCBoard (R) v15.22/5
---------------