Anonymous Newspaper Commenters Subpoenaed In Tax Case

skuzzlebutt writes "In a federal tax case reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal last week, a local businessman has been paying his employees in gold coins instead of cash or ACH, and has reportedly told them that they can only be taxed on the face value of the coinage — not the much higher market value of the metal. The United States disagreed, and brought him up on 57 counts of income tax evasion, tax fraud and criminal conspiracy. The non-authenticated comments section of the original article brought a lot of supporters out of the woodwork, including a few who thought the jury should be hung (literally, procedurally, or figuratively ... pick one). In response, the prosecution has subpoenaed the names of the anonymous commenters, citing fears of jury safety. Or something. The obvious questions of privacy and protected speech aside, for the folks that support the defendant (the newspaper is fighting the subpoena), this also brings back into the spotlight the troll-empowering nature of pseudo-anonymous, non-authenticated boards. If they want to find you, they will; is anonymous commenting still worth it, or is it just too risky for the board owners?"

Comments

Why make it traceable?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Does anyone know why forum administrators even bother keeping around enough information to reveal the identity of an anonymous poster?

I mean, I can see keeping around the web server logs for a day or two, to help debug problems. And if you do analytics, keeping the logs around long enough for the analytics software to compute aggregate data.

But why keep any data longer than that; especially data that's detailed enough to tie an IP# to a posted message?

Face Value vs Ore Value

[Rockoon]

So on the one hand we take Gold Coins and use the Ore Value, while on the other we take Quarters and use the Face Value.

So lets say I take my pay check and head off to the bank and when cashing it, get a roll of pennies. Further suppose that one these pennies has some rare quality making it worth $100 to a collector... is that an extra $100 of Income?

Re:Face Value vs Ore Value

[Rockoon]

Certainly in the scenerio where I actualy sell, the onus is on me to report income.

If I don't sell, however... its just face value, right?

In this story they go after the employer, regardless of the actions of the employees.

This is a very complicated subject that begs a lot of questions. Can my bank post a $100 loss for their mistake in giving me a $100 penny? Can they post a $100 win if they hand me a counterfeit $100?

Re:Face Value vs Ore Value

[twostix]

What they're terrified of is people going back to hard currency.

He's being made an example of, it's that simple.

It's a loophole that's protected by the US constitution. Gold and Silver are protected as legal currency and the federal government must supply and accept gold and silver tender. The only way around it is to amend the constitution - or scare people enough not to do it.

If it became popular may also get people asking difficult questions like why a $30 coin is really worth $1000, or more to the point why a $1 federal reserve note can only buy 1% of the value of a $30 dollar coin.

Such things are best not thought about by the plebs.

Re:i'll be the first to say..

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they want the identities of all submitters of comments on that article. Not just the ones who made threats (going from the vague to the hyperbole).

It's actually a chilling effect. One day you are commenting on a newspaper article (without making threats), the next day your name and address pop up on some prosecutors desk while he is investigating another commenter on the same article.

The tax dodge itself seems spurious

[91degrees]

So, they can avoid income tax on 99% of their income by being paid in $1000 worth of coins with a total face value of $10. That makes sense.

Surely then, should they choose to sell these they'll pay income tax on any profit they make. If they use them as legal tender, they'll only be able to use the face value. I suppose they might be able to haggle the price of a large purchase down a little but for everyday spending it seems the savings are small.

How anonymous is slashdot?

[mdmkolbe]

If the logs aren't there, the subpoena doesn't hurt anything. So I ask what sort of logs does slashdot keep that could conceivably be used to track down an AC? Be imaginative in your answers (e.g. someone could try matching the HTTP access logs against the time the comment was posted(*)). Think like a smart technical cop who really wants to figure this out.

(*) There are probably too many accesses in a single minute to determine that reliably, but it may give you a candidate list that you could then correlate with other data. Like I said, be imaginative.

IRS is right on this one

[davidwr]

What this guy did was essentially barter gold bullion that happened to be in coin form for labor.

Even if the US government is required to trade a $20 bill for your $20 gold piece, that does not establish the value of the gold piece for tax purposes.

Even a $20 bill can be worth more than $20 if it's a collector's item, such as one that's in an uncut block, one that's old and still in original condition, one that's very old, or one that's been autographed by hand by the Treasurer of the United States or Secretary of the Treasury whose signature appears on the bill.

If I pay my employees in collector-value currency, you bet the IRS will consider it a barter-for-labor arrangement and tax accordingly.

Re:i'll be the first to say..

[FrankieBaby1986]

There's a huge gap between "they ought to" hurt someone and "I'm going to" hurt someone.

Wow, do I wish more people realized this. I was suspended in Highschool for this EXACT same thing. I "Threatened" another student who had been picking on me by saying I ought to kick his ass. When I pointed out to the vice principal that the choice of the words "ought to" was intentional because it implied I was not going to, she claimed there was no difference.