Best comment of the day goes again to omghe’sstillanamerican who found this ridiculous article about the IRS seeking a new public persona: IRS Seeks Some PR Help. This is an open thread (meaning you can share videos or stories that would be fun for everyone, or whatever you want).
This is my favorite part of the article:
“For the IRS, the first thing to do would be to change your name,” said David Bauman, an agent representing Metta World Peace, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player formerly known as Ron Artest. As Mr. Artest, the basketball player “at one point was the most hated player in the NBA” following an ugly brawl with the Detroit Pistons in 2004, but was able to slowly win fans back, Mr. Bauman said.
Yeah, Ron Artest should have changed his name to Twinkle Bell; then maybe the fans at his games would be afraid that he’d run up into the stands and clobber them (if the brawl had just been the with Detroit Pistons it wouldn’t have been so bad). Maybe the IRS should change its name to something like this: “Cuddly Bears” with the slogan: “We are from the government and we are here to help you.”
I’ve relinquished my citizenship; and I don’t go to Laker games (Artest’s Peace’s current team).
The Ron Artest Metta World Peace fight is still available on Youtube:
Artest’s new name really is: Metta World Peace. Some others have come up with alternative names for the IRS, International Robbers Society, We Don’t Tax Foreigners Anymore (WDTFA)–problem with those suggestions is that they won’t help the image: the first is too factual; the second is too much of a lie (like Metta World Peace). I invite alternate names to help the IRS mask its image effectively.
Here in the great North, the Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t need an expensive PR agent like Ron Artest and the IRS. They have the Isaac Brock Society. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen positive statements made about the Canadian Taxman on this blog. Here is another from OMG himself:
What they [the IRS] need is to see how a civilized revenue service works. They should all be sent to Canada for training with the Canada Revenue Agency.
Canadians love to pay taxes, apparently. (Sorry this is one Canadian trait I still haven’t learnt, though I do call the last letter of the alphabet “zed”). I want to point you to the most positive treatment of a taxman (not the taxman but a taxman) that I’ve yet to see in the media, from one of my favorite shows (Season 1, episode 2); enjoy:
Thanks for the alert to that WSJ blog….
I had to quickly fire off something before I get to my day’s chores… A plug for Isaac Brock! 🙂
Just Me wrote :
Does Grover Norquest really have to ask “what did they do?”
Has he not been paying attention the past 3 years to the so-called off offshore account jihad with it’s many unintended negative consequences for US Expats abroad and new US immigrants?
Has he not read the National Tax Payer Advocates most recent report to Congress, or has he failed to pay attention only the 6th Tax Advocacy Directive (TAD) ever issued? (This was a directive to get IRS to amend its abusive ways of conducting its Voluntary Disclosure programs. Shulman was supposed to respond by the 26th of January and he is stonewalling Nina Olson.)
Has Grover not been attentive to the implementation of FATCA that has the world financial institutions in an up roar? Of their unilateral regulatory decision to require all US Banks to report non resident account data to the IRS so they can give it to 192 country tax agencies around the world?
And if you have no idea what I am talking about, I would suggest you should start googling.
The US MSM has been almost totally asleep on these issues.
You might start with exploring what is going on just north of the border in Canada. They get it! Try reading the Isaac Brock Society blog, and you will begin to understand. The IRS needs more than a name change and a PR effort.
First and foremost they need help from Congress to reduce 72,000 pages of absurdity which is called the US special interest tax statutes and get them down to a more manageable level. It is they that create the many problems in the first place with the most complex and incomprehensible tax system in the world, bar none!
Secondly they need to learn that just using fear, threats and extreme penalties as their main marketing and education tool of choice just makes a lot of angry customers, and does nothing to increase voluntary compliance or warm and fuzzy feelings about their organization
Finally, the US needs to come into the 21st century and adopt a territorial tax system like the rest of the civilized world, and stop the over the border assertion of its rights to tax its citizens anywhere in the universe. America and Eritrea and alone in this practice. America keeps good company, doesn’t it?
Google: What is the Systemic Risk to the World’s Economy… That should take you to an Isaac Brock post that will explain it to you.
“Isaac Brock Society” is also the best IRS’ PR —policy revelation !!!
I’ve only had 1 business audit by the CRA in the last 10 years. It was pretty painless, though I did have the over the top drama queen reaction like the characters in the show above … but I didn’t call the tax man names … he seemed too nice for that.
It turned out I didn’t owe them anything but they were wondering why I paid so little GST compared to my total sales. My accountant explained that I’m in an export business and supplied them with enough documentation to prove it and all was well.