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IRS to Allow Tax Preparers to Sell Your Info?
merkel writes "The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the IRS has proposed rule changes allowing tax-return preparers, like H&R Block, to sell an individual's return information to marketers and data brokers. The proposed rule [PDF], which does contain some substantive protections for the processing of electronic returns, was published in the Federal Register on December 8, 2005. The official comment period has passed, but hearings will be held this month."
Note to self: re-read the EULA on Turbo Tax.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Oh no, my information is going to be sold and the government is going to allow tax preparers to sell it!
... you can send me all the marketing offers and SPAM you want. I am worried about someone with my same name trying to pass their credit card debt off on me. And I'm also worried about anyone I know who might have a problem with a stalker.
*gasp*
Let's narrow our fears on something a little more worrisome regarding privacy and the United States Government.
Ever filled out census information? Because, if you have, your information is available to anyone via a number of sites. That's right, for as cheap as an $8-$10 fee, people can find out what income range you are in along with a variety of other facts about you. They can also find out where you live for free!
I would normally thank god that I have a very non-unique name but if I enter my hometown and state, there I am listed five times with my address and parent's phone number. I was just a kid when I lived there! The best part is that if you click my name, they take the liberty to plug my address into Mapquest and Google Map bars in case you don't have the time to copy and paste it in there!
Go ahead, now try your name.
*cups his hand to his ear listening for the sound of a million nerds enshrouding themselves in tin foil*
I'm not worried about my personal information being sold to marketers
Do you know what your government is doing with your census data?
My work here is dung.
It is the individual taxpayers information.
It was not acquired by the voluntary cooperation of the source.
If they want to sell it then they need permission from
the owner of the information, not the IRS's.
I use TurboTax. I normally pay the $29 fee to electronically file it, but I can just as easily not send it to an intermediary by printing it out and mailing it in.
It will be interesting to see how many people go back to paper filing their forms directly to the IRS. Should be a nightmare of un-automation for them.
I'm a big tall mofo.
CPA's ethics guidelines limit who and how a CPA share your information.
-Peer review
-Court order
-and such
It is a lot worse loose your CPA license than if a evening tax preparer to have to pick up a seasonal job. I doubt HR block would sell your info though even if they could.
Hmm...it's my data, I provided it, where's my cut? I'd say $10 for every company my information was sold to. And I get royalties for every time a new company takes it from one of the original buyers. At least that would be incentive to give up your information.
Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes.
You can't expect to protect people from their own stupidity. If the preparer can't get the tax return data this way, they can just have their customers fill out a 'financial worksheet' and sell that instead. If you're stupid enough to 'just sign' anything, you're going to have your privacy violated. This ruling is moot.
Just think of the possibilities, like blackmailing people by telling them you will query their deductions with the IRS and get them audited, you could get a raise out of your boss, have random people give you money, get dates with pretty girls (hey this is /.), the possibilities are endless.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Since the main arguments for and against various tax reform proposals depend on much more serious problems with the US Federal tax system, I think the increased taxpayer privacy attribute of the national sales tax proposal is only of marginal importance in this field. Moreover, I feel I must point out that naming your proposal the "FairTax" rather than the "National Sales Tax" is political demagoguery at its worst. This is without considering the merits of the proposal.
Hmm...it's my data, I provided it, where's my cut?
I've been wondering this for years.
Companies have paid lip service to "privacy" over the years. Most every website and company has a "privacy policy", that often ends with the clause "subject to change without your notice".
Is there some way that consumers can organize and make their own demands of the terms that determine who they do business with? Kinda like a union for consumers?
The only answer I've come up with is hiding myself behind a company or corporation and not personally owning any property, but is there a way to do this with other consumers that want to have the same rights?
Yes, the credit reporting agencies already have that information, AND they already sell it if you have not Opted Out. This link is to the official site that lets you opt-out online, you can find the same link with Google keywords "opt out credit"
Those credit card offers in the mail that offer pre-approved cards are often based on information pulled from lists created and sold by the credit reporting agencies. This is an opt-out list, if you haven't told them not to sell your info, they are selling it to credit companies, insurance companies and debit collectors.
If you are interested in privacy, opt out now.
Enough is enough...of calling a GS tax "fair."
...and, come on, this "hidden taxes" routine is just lame. We need 2.5T to keep the proverbial lights on in the federal government. You WILL PAY FOR IT SOMEHOW. You don't need to go through all the individual taxes to know what the government is taking. Just look at the budget. It comes to about $17k per working adult. Yeah, that's a lot of cash--and that's your "fair share." Well, actually, it's about $8333 per person, so if you have a family of four, you really should be ponying up about $33k instead of getting all those child credits while sucking up the education budget.
At a certain point (generally at about $100k), the vast majority people quickly stop consuming their income and start hoarding it. Oh sure, some will burn through it on booze, drugs and hookers, but most start shoving that capital back into capital. The higher that income gets, the smaller the percentage of it that is consumed. So, your "fair" tax would, dollar-for-dollar, tax someone making $100k the same as someone making $1M...and I got news for you, that "used property" exclusion? Well, they ain't makin' any new land, so guess what will happen to the price of dirt? Well, until we're vacationing on the Moon.
Business purposes = no tax? Again, people nearing or exceeding $100k routinely put their entire damned lives on Schedule C (or into corporations) for exactly this purpose. Even if they _do_ consume above that level, it will surely be claimed as business expense--and that's determined at the point of sale or are we back to filing returns to prove it? Well, guess what, if you can avoid taxes completely by claiming business expense...you're going to find a great number of entrepreneurs and if they have to file returns, what's the benefit again in terms of paperwork and complexity reduction? If they don't, how do we prove it was business-related? Hmm.
A "prebate?" So, everyone gets a monthly check for the taxes on the first $14k of income, assumed to be consumed? Gah... That is going to eliminate the bureaucracy precisely HOW? So, people under $14k will get prebates for whatever % of $14k or will they have to file returns to prove exactly how poor they are? That'll really free up the ol' paperwork and fraud burden, now, won't it? What if it's a family of 12 and all but one are saving every penny. Now do we file returns to prove our consumption of "necessities?" Oy vey.
The tax structure we have now is designed to induce certain behavior in many sectors. It is also designed to pay for certain _types_ of consumption, like gas taxes paying for the interstate pavement based on use. You consume pavement, you pay for the pavement. This sort of all-encompassing tax would shift the bureaucratic burden, it wouldn't eliminate it.
Really, I think the "Fair Tax" crowd has critically examined the current problem, which is certainly well due and admirable, but I don't think they've critically examined their solution, which on even first sight is fraught with all the same problems as the existing system -- and totally ignores a number of problems that the existing system deals with quite extensively.
Once again, the media has overstated a story to attract attention to a non-issue. Regardless of what the IRS decides to do about tax preparers sharing tax information, this practice is already regulated by another law: the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act(GLBA).
GLBA was passed in 1999 to modernize aspects of the banking industry. Title V prevents financial institutions from selling consumer data without consent from the consumer. Remember a couple of years ago every bank, credit card company, loan agency, and anyone else who touched your money flooded your mailbox with Privacy Policy notices and "opt-out" statements? That was GLBA.
The best part is that GLBA classifies tax preparers as financial institutions , so H&R Block must provide the same protections to your information that a bank would (or should).
The proposed IRS rule change under section 1 specifically cites GLBA and points out that this rule change has no impact on the GLBA requirements.
Sorry to all you privacy alarmists out there, but this "Privacy Bomb" for the IRS is a dud.
Sigs are for lusers. Hey! wait a second...
Yeah, it's called a government. You elect representatives that share your views, then they vote to determine a policy that represents the majority. They have absolute power to protect the people. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Voting for the guy with the prettiest TV commercials kind of short circuits the whole thing.
or
Suddenly tax-prep gets more lucrative. Of course, if they ever come through with that "flat tax" all those guys'll be out of business overnight anyway (and then I can ride to work on a flying pig every morning...)
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Sorry to flame, but that's one of the most irresponsibly simplified statements I've seen in this thread.
Do you think a company like H&R Block is going to hand you a neon orange sheet of paper with 172 pt. font that says "DO YOU WANT US TO SELL YOUR PERSONAL DATA?"
No. They're going to hide it in one subclause of a 14-page contract agreement, tersely worded so that it doesn't even mention "selling", "personal data", or "yours". It's probably gonna be a single sentence like "Applicant surrenders all rights to proclude the preparer from providing gathered data to third parties." Taxes are stressful enough without having to become a lawyer to avoid being bilked by corporations.
Wake up and smell the slap in the face.
The "Fair" Tax people want to move the entire tax burden to sales taxes, so that poor people will pay more of the tax burden.
Flat Tax proponents want to have a flat rate tax on all income, so everyone pays a fair share in direct proportion to how much they can afford.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak