Our Low-Tech Tax Code

theodp writes "After establishing that nothing can excuse Joe Stack's murderous intentional plane crash into an IRS office, a NY Times Op-Ed explains the reference in Stack's suicide note to an obscure federal tax law — Section 1706 of the 1986 tax act — which the software engineer claimed declared him a 'criminal and non-citizen slave' and ruined his career. Interestingly, a decade-old NY Times article on Section 1706 pretty much agreed: 'The immediate effect of these [Section 1706] audits is to force individual programmers ... to abandon their dreams of getting rich off their high-technology skills.' Section 1706, the NYT Op-Ed concludes, 'is an example of how Congress enacted a discriminatory law that hurt thousands of technology consultants, their staffing firms and customers. And despite strong bipartisan efforts and unbiased studies supporting that law's repeal, it remains on the books.'"

Comments

Re:Was it a cause of his legal trouble?

[Lehk228]

from what i could tell reading the article, the trouble appeared when you tried to run a temp agency that kept everyone as contractors or if you tried to create a temp agency as part of your business and use "temps" to staff your business without paying the requisite payroll taxes. that's what i got from

In passing Section 1706 in 1986, Congress singled out the programmers, engineers, analysts and many other technical workers by mandating that staffing firms no longer be protected by Section 530's safe haven.

considering that the articles' main assertion, that tax law makes it impossible/almost impossible for programmers to work as consultants, conflicts so much with reality, i am ready to file this under the right-wing anti-tax propaganda heading.

Re:The IRS is not a *kind* organization...

[ArcherB]

The fix is simple. Federal sales tax. Period.

No IRS. No tax code other than a percentage and what items will remain tax free (food, medicine, etc).

Re:There's more to this story

[ArsonSmith]

I know you've been convinced of a healthcare problem in this country, but it's just not true.