The IRS wants to use social media to catch tax cheats

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: December 27, 2018 at 15:03:46 GMT+9
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The IRS wants to use social media to catch tax cheats
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from reader Randall Head.  DLH]
>
> The IRS wants to use social media to catch tax cheats
> By Justin Rohrlich
> Dec 26 2018
> <https://qz.com/1507962/the-irs-wants-to-use-facebook-and-instagram-to-catch-tax-evaders/>
>
> The Internal Revenue Service is looking for ways to scour social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and 
> Twitter in its ongoing quest to catch tax cheats.
>
> That’s according to a request for information issued December 18 by the IRS’s National Office of Procurement. The 
> mining of social media data by the agency has been suspected in the past, but the IRS has never before confirmed the 
> practice.
>
> “Businesses and individuals increasingly use social media to advertise, promote, and sell products and services,” the 
> IRS solicitation reads. “For example, taxpayers can create ‘online stores’ on social networking sites free of cost. 
> Much of this information is unrestricted, allowing the public, businesses and various governmental agencies to 
> discover taxpayers’ locations and income sources. But the IRS currently has no formal tool to access this public 
> information, compile social media feeds, or search multiple social media sites.”
>
> Current IRS policy regarding its employees’ use of internet-based social media research is “largely prohibitive,” it 
> continues. Workers are barred from using their personal social media accounts for work, nor are they allowed to 
> create fake accounts to perform compliance-related tasks. The IRS also “prohibits fictitious ‘friending,’ ‘liking,’ 
> and ‘following’ a person or business.”
>
> Evinnia Lenick, a senior program analyst with the IRS who is overseeing this stage of the initiative, and Kelvin 
> Bogan, the contract specialist on the project, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
>
> American businesses underpay their taxes by $125 billion each year, according to IRS estimates. Overall, the tax 
> agency reports a net tax gap of more than $400 billion annually due to tax evaders.
>
> The agency can certainly use all the help it can get, especially in the face of a budget deficit that has swollen 
> under president Donald Trump to $782 billion; corporate tax receipts have dropped $92 billion year-over-year. The IRS 
> is also working with fewer resources: As of last year, it had 9,510 auditors, one-third fewer than it had in 2010. It 
> conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop of 42%. What’s more, nearly a third of current IRS 
> employees will be eligible to retire in the next year.
>
> As such, the IRS is looking for a social media search tool that will, among other things:
>
>    • Provide a product that is easily explainable in court.
>    • Provide real time, customizable reports of publicly available social media information (provided or advertised 
> by businesses), such as new products, current sales, and new locations.
>    • Provide reports showing that a taxpayer participated in an online chat room, blog, or forum, and reports showing 
> the chat room or blog conversation threads.
>    • Provide available biometric data, such as photos, current address, or changes to marital status.
>    • Provide access for at least 25,000 concurrent users.
>
> [snip]
>
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