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IRS Now Wants To Repeal Cell Phone Tax
narramissic writes "Last week the IRS caused an uproar when it requested public comments on ways to clarify a decades-old law, seldom enforced, that would tax personal usage of business cell phones. But IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said that the request for comments did not mean that the largely ignored rule would now be enforced. 'Some have incorrectly implied that the IRS is "cracking down" on employee use of employer-provided cell phones,' Shulman wrote. 'To the contrary, the IRS is attempting to simplify the rules and eliminate uncertainty for businesses and individuals.' And in fact, the IRS is now recommending that the law be repealed, saying that 'the passage of time, advances in technology, and the nature of communication in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete.'"
There are many situations where a request for comments is mandatory.
Your right winger knee jerk reaction is utterly without a basis in the facts of this particular situation.
The irs actually does a pretty fair job of making some sort of sense - twisted though it occasionally may be - out of the spaghetti legislation handed to it by congress.
It's hardly surprising that they would ask congress to ditch a law with which maybe a half dozen people on the planet comply.
The cost of maintaining the documentation, training it's agents, publishing forms no one uses - what's the point?
It's typical that even when an agency steps up and says "um...we've looked at what we're doing and there are some practices that don't make sense, and don't serve anyone, and we'd like to change them - anyone else have any input first?" - some troll crawls out of Limbaugh's jock to piss and whine.
Get a life.