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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?"
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?
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?
"His name was James Damore."
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.
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.
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.
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