At the Isaac Brock Society we are the masters of parody and satire. But nothing is truly funnier than when real life imitates the Onion:
Customer Satisfaction Survey of Taxpayers at an All-Time High, Says IRS Commissioner
At the Isaac Brock Society we are the masters of parody and satire. But nothing is truly funnier than when real life imitates the Onion:
Customer Satisfaction Survey of Taxpayers at an All-Time High, Says IRS Commissioner
I would like to see the Customer Satisfaction of Americans who live and work abroad. Do you think Mr. Shulman is interested on this?
I don’t think he cares.
@ Thatisme: Don’t you think it would rate his job performance among expats would be in the 70 percentile too? This is delusional lying: first to themselves about their job performance, and secondly to the American people. When the whole thing comes crashing down, most people will be so surprised.
The only part that matters is “says IRS Commissioner…”. Once you reach that bit, it’s clear that all the rest will be spin, rhetoric, distortion, fabrication, gloating, and conceit.
Say it isn’t so……Could this all be just a bad dream? A pathetic, stupid, bad dream. If I could only sleep these many, many sleepless nights, I would ask someone to pinch me so I could wake up.
“People need to come in and get right with us before we find you,” Doug Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner, said in January. “We are following more leads, and the risk for people who do not come in continues to increase.”
Let me see if I understand Mr. Shulman. You all please correct me if I am wrong. I assume that he knows that Americans Abroad have an Earned Income Exclusion of around 90,000.00 dollars. So he must be talking of people who earn more than that and even if they do they will have a Tax Credit for the taxes they pay where they reside, I guess he also knows that if they have savings and investments, whatever they earn they will pay taxes to the country where they reside, And the IRS will give them Tax Credit for this. So, up to now no tax liability to the USA.
But let’s then figure what Mr. Shulman is after, An American living in Colombia for the past ten years who just learned about the FBARs. He never heard about it before. In his country of residency there is not one IRS representative, No CPAs who work with Americans Abroad. He learned about this recently when visiting people in the USA.
Well, Mr. Shulman knows that for the past eight years this person in Colombia would not really owe any USA taxes for the reasons above. But now comes the catch: he did not file the FBARs for eight years. Well, Mr. Shulman will receive a correction filing of eight years of FBARs but… it will be up to him to decide if he will accept or not the explanation for not filing. Let’s say that this American has a life savings of US$200.000.
If Mr. Shulman does not feel that the explanation was reasonable he may charge criminal charges and of course will collect money: 10,000 a year for 8 FBARs will be US$80,000.00, plus 27.5% of the highest investment. That is US$55,000.00. Total: US$135,000.00 not of taxes owed but of stiff penalties for not filing the FBARs..
Since the great majority of Americans Living Abroad ( and dual citizens and green carders) still don’t know about FBARs, Mr. Shulman then will make a lot of money. Can you imagin?. Anyone can understand that it is not in the best interest of Mr. Shulman to let Americans Abroad know about FBARs. This is why, of course, he has not made any effort in this direction.
This is also why the IRS Tax Advisor is questioning him without receiving an answer.
Please correct me.
Thatisme, you summarize well. But the statute of limitations on on FBAR is six years. For a $200,000 account a willful FBAR can be 50% per year. =$600,000 It is much worse than what you describe and the actual FAQs coming from the IRS verify what I am saying: http://isaacbrocksociety.com/2012/02/22/irs-is-bluffing-bad-faith-negotiations-in-the-ovdi/
The 27.5% is for the OVDI, in which case the commissioner has agreed not to press criminal charges.
Who took that ‘customer’ ‘satisfaction’ survey? How big was the sample size? Probably no-one who has had their identity stolen with the help of information related to their returns – and then not gotten any substantial help to resolve the situation. Definitely does NOT include anyone living outside the US (several millions – a pretty big sample). Does not include anyone trying to understand the labyrinthine forms, and comply with incomprehensible instructions.
I am sure, in 2011 alone about 650,000 victims of tax refunds fraud would disagree. It takes a year to get their tax refund after many calls and long waits. Might be thousands of people who perpetuated the crime are happy, because IRS not even catching 1% of the criminals and may be not even trying to pursue 95% of the cases.
@Thatisme
Mate, here is the correction you asked for.
You have calculated the “in lieu of penalty” wrong. It is NOT 27.5% plus $10k per year for 8 years. It is ONLY 27.5% of highest aggregate only. I say “only” in a relative term. It is onerous enough, in and of itself.
@badger
Don’t ask questions, just accept it as fact. 🙂 That is what journalist do these days, just repeat press releases without any questions.
I hope world recognizes and remembers Douglas Shulman as the most unfair commissioner, who ignored criminal tax cheats such as tax-refund fraud (responsible for increasing 10 folds in his tenure due to not pursuing the criminals), but unfairly persecuted innocent dual-citizens who owe no taxes but committed inadvertent mistakes due to many factors such as FBAR, the complex tax code or they don’t even know that they are US citizens. He has perused this flawed course even after being warned by many, including tax payer advocate and US ambassador to the Canada.
He is responsible for alienating millions of expats and immigrants causing irreparable damage to the US in many aspects not just limited to US exports and tourism. Most of the expats and immigrants could never trust the IRS or the USA. We lost our innocence and belief that US is fair and we can get justice.
Just like any typical bureaucrat he is self-promoting his ego and credential before leaving IRS in November to land a new job, by deliberately hiding facts that how much of the US$4.4 billion in OVDI is collected as penalties from innocent dual-citizens and what percent of 33,000 are dual-citizens. He refused to provide information, which is requested by ACA under FOIA.
As an example of how well the IRS is serving tax payers my husband went into an IRS office last week in the USA where there wasn’t even an actual person there to serve the public. There was security to go through though. The guard on duty was probably grateful to have a job but he confided in my husband that he thought all the security procedures were over the top. Anyway if a person did have any questions s(he) would have to sit in front of a computer screen with a camera attached, hold up the forms to the camera and point to which line s(he) was having trouble with while an agent in another city tried to assist. Needless to say that wasn’t going to cut it for my husband. He just went to the stacks of forms and picked up what he thought he needed for us and for his mother. He’ll have to seek help elsewhere if he needs it. BTW they didn’t have form 8938. Last year there was personal help available at that same office so he could get his mother’s forms checked over and ask any questions he had directly. Yes indeedy do, the service is peachy keen at the IRS — NOT! Mr. Shulman, it’s time to come clean with the true results of whatever half-assed survey you had done to assess your customer satisfaction. Gotta tell ya my husband certainly wasn’t satisfied.
The mendacity of the mind of the IRS can be seen just in the term “customer”. Taxpayers are not “customers” which according to Websters is: “one that purchases a commodity or service”. Perhaps we are “clients”, as “one that is under the protection of another”. To call taxpayers “customers” is Orwellian–the government defines reality and the people have no choice but to go along with it.
Hey, Douglas, I know you are out there, looking at your mirror,
Hey Dougy: here some other more accurate terms for your client base:
victims, the oppressed, casualties, prey, gibier, Opfer, abused, whipping boys, plebs
Perhaps y’all could think of a few more suggestions.
@ Petros
All I can think of is “mark” as in target or sucker.
@ Em, thanks. But how will we make sure that IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman reads our suggestions?
@ Petros
Truthfully if Doug Shulman won’t respond in a reasonable fashion to Nina Olson I don’t think we can expect him to read or care about anything anyone suggests. We should all do an end-run on him and his self-satisfied mafiosa-like organization. I once suggested that we just attach copies of all of our information slips to a blank (with signature) 1040 and send that along to the IRS each year. Let its brilliant agents figure it all out for us, including having to learn about the tax terminology, tax treaties and tax codes of the respective countries we are living in and filing from. Getting trustworthy help outside the USA is difficult, even if you have hundreds of dollars to spend (or just as likely waste) and now it appears to me that the IRS is even downgrading its services within the USA. Actually taxpayers living in the USA should do the same if they cannot easily, freely and with a high degree of accuracy get answers to their questions. Furthermore, they will have to pry the pen from my cold dead hand before I do an electronic filing (not even sure you can outside the USA). I refuse to make it any easier for them. I like the idea of someone having to walk to a filing cabinet after transferring our numbered entries into a super computer. We don’t owe any USA taxes and my conscience is not bothered in the least that taxpayers in the USA have to foot the bill for that extra effort.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” (Abraham Lincoln)
What do you think Abe would say about Shulman’s contributions?
@ Em, as to your second suggestion, I concur. But as to your first suggestion, I think as expats our best job that we can do is give them as little information as possible. That is, I am not attaching any slips, well except the charitable donation receipts, which I sent in copies in advance because I know they aren’t going to believe me.
@ Petros
I see your point but I still like the idea of burying a tax agent under a mountain of information — a perverse switcheroo on the laughable paperwork reduction act. We’ve always volunteered our Notices of Assessment but those are pretty vague except for the totals. They don’t even break down income into all its components.
@Em, yes, they wanted information so I’ve I’ve given them literally everything on my 8938. Many accounts had a zero balance or just a few cents maximum during the year since they hadn’t been technically closed… plus, I also included all my cell phone Sim pre-paid balances as well as my travel card and paypal/alertpay accounts since they could arguably be deemed debit cards of sorts. With the hypothetical risk of a $10,000 (or even ‘mere’ $500 negligence fine) per account for delinquent FBARs, thought it safer to over-report
Something’s “high”, but it’s not customer satisfaction.
Whatever Douglas Shulman has been smoking, I’m sure it’s illegal in USA!
@Badge, he knows but is being an ostrich. He refuses to risk losing face and will thus not admit to all his collateral damage for expats’ unintentional mistakes or lack of reporting.
It’s absurd that my accountant is going to charge me several thousand file my 2011 tax return. It will be over 200 pages long. It’s Orwellian.
If I didn’t have to think about leaving my assets to my brothers’ children or being able to continue regularly visiting, then renouncing would have made perfect sense. I feel resentful about all the expensive compliance requirements but have to be pragmatic, unfortunately.
No wonder Customer Satisfaction was so high…
Inspector General calls IRS problems “shocking and disappointing”
No wonder that Commission Shulman decided to leave after this term. Maybe we can get him out the door earlier, and in shame.
Rep. Johnson Says Shulman Should Resign Following TIGTA Report on ITINs