Not so much. This is holdover terminology from the Cold War.
First World - USA and allies, primarily NATO, but essentially 'Western Civilization'
Second World - USSR and allies, primarily the Warsaw Pact. The famed 'Communist bloc'. [Deprecated]
Third World - The proxy battlegrounds on which the Cold War was fought, primarily located in the Southern Hemisphere and too poor to be noticed for themselves.
Full Disclosure: I work for the IRS, and have a business need to take OUO or SBU data outside of the campus where I work from time to time.
Glossary:
OUO: [O]fficial [U]se [O]nly.- This is a class of information
SBU: [S]ensitive [B]ut [U]nclassified This is the category into which all identifiable taxpayer data falls, and falls under the protection of IRC 6103 (with consequences defined in IRC 1203)
The article here is pure scaremongering, though it does at least touch on some of the procedures the Service used to secure taxpayer data. The article makes the following points.
The IRS has lots of sensitive data
If individual people tasked with protecting sensitive information do stupid things, it will defeat any security measure.
When a laptop is issued, it gets whole disk encryption that can't be turned off by the user. Similarly, when the IRS issues other portable devices, they get the same. The rule, of course, is that you don''t hook up anything the IRS doesn't own to anything it does, so personal thumb drives and home networks should not be an issue, and we make the point every time we issue hardware. Similarly, the article talks about unencrypted drives on Campus machinery, but if someone has penetrated the physical security of the Campus and actually swipes one of these hard drives, things have already gone horribly wrong.
If the IRS lost a great whacking load of SBU data, of course it would be a disaster, this is nothing new, and is obvious. The article makes it seem like it's inevitable or in immediate danger of happening, and this just isn't true.
There is no 0.99999(&c) == 1 argument. It is a fact.
Lemma:The set of Real Numbers is dense Meaning:For any two Real Numbers A & B such that A > B, there exists a Real Number C such that C > B and A > C.
By definition, A > B implies that (A - B) is a positive Real, specifically noting that this means (A - B) > 0.
A - B is a positive Real implies that (A - B)/2 is also a positive Real less than (A - B) but still greater than 0
For completeness, note that (A - B)/2 being Real implies that B + (A - B)/2 is also Real.
(A - B) > (A - B)/2 implies B + (A - B) > B + (A - B)/2.
(A - B)/2 > 0 implies B + (A - B)/2 > B
Recall A == B + (A - B)
Therefore, A > B + (A - B)/2 > B
B + (A - B)/2 meets the definition of C shown above and the Lemma is proved
Claim: The number N, defined as 0.99999(&c) is infinitely close to 1 without actually being equal to 1. Meaning:Define a Real Number N such that for any number A such that 1 > A and A != N, N > A. We claim that N != 1
1 is Natural, and therefore Real by definition.
For illustration, 1/3 ==.33333(&c)
For further illustration, N == 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 and is therefore Rational, and therefore Real.
1 != N implies either than 1 > N, or N > 1. We take the case that 1 > N
1 > N, 1 Real, N Real implies that there exists a Real C such that 1 > C > N by the Lemma shown above.
The above contradicts the Claim.
The Claim implies its own negation, and is therefore false.
Mandated industry ratings boards are, at best, marketing tools, and worse, a mechanism for making an end run around the Constitution. Note here that the 'mandate' can come from the government, or as a result of threatened government action (as was the case with the ESRB, the MPAA, and, to a certain extent, the CCA)
The exmple of the MPAA rating system is the most instructive. The groups that applied the pressures which indirectly caused the creation of the MPAA ratings system were not interested in informed choice. They were interested in stamping out 'objectionable material'. Ratings allowed this to happen on a much greater scale than before. Where previously, a fundie/fascist/parents'/'children's' group would have had to picket, letter-write, or generally raise a stink about each title directly, now it was just a simple matter of applying pressure on the theaters to never show anything that carried an "X" ("X" is now "NC-17", apparently because someone neglected to trademark "X" in total ignorance of the market forces that move porn) As a result, "R" grew to encompass most of "X/NC-17" and the latter rating became a commercial kiss of death. Substitute "M" for "R" and "AO" for "X/NC-17" and you see the same thing happening again, just with games instead of movies and Wal-Mart in place of National Amusements (Sony, as always, plays itself) . The 'top' rating becomes tiny and de facto banned, and the 'second' rating covers everything that should have been in the 'top', because the 'top' becomes a convenient label for anything that will corrupt your children, grow hair in strange places and give you scoliosis.
Yep. 26 USC 61 defines what is taxable income, and uses the phrase "from whatever source derived". 26 USC 1 imposes the tax itself on individuals, estates and trusts. 26 USC 11 does the same for corporations.
While I cannot be cretain about point #5, unless you are referring to something on the order of md5 sums for packages, I submit to you that portage (as used by Gentoo) does all these things.
emerge [package-name]
emerge [package-name] or emerge -u world
emerge -C [package-name]
This is automatic, and includes a system for aborting sequences of installations which would cause mutex conditions
(see above)
emerge [package-name]
These settings are in/etc/make.conf
These setting are also in/etc/make.conf, and is generally considered (though not actually completely) mandatory, that being the point of the distribution.
Easy. Goes like this:
"Give us the marks and shut up. In return, we will:
Let you use the marks to which you are actually entitled
Let you sell Beatles songs through iTMS
In the alternative, we can crush you in court and drain your bank accounts along the way. Additionally, you could then be sure that you'll never be paid for any Beatles track that travels by Internet."
The Beatles are 40 years old, and need iTMS much more than it needs them.
At the moment, the only virtual goods with any intrinsic potentially taxable value are those in Second Life and other worlds which grant actual ownership of objects to players. In these kinds of situations, there may be barter consequences, but only if there is a way to actually determine the $US value of the object. Consequently, it is possible to incur a deductable expense in the creation of such object, and in general it will behave like any other intangible capital asset, including the existence of a basis, if such can be properly documented.
In 'more traditional' games where the EULA says 'we own your character, your stuff, and your little dog too', then the in-game objects are worthless. This has two consequences. First, sale of such an object for real cash results in a taxable event as a source of ordinary income rather than capital income. Second, in-game exchanges are non-events, as everything involved is worthless.
Bear in mind that these are all potential treatments, and that the IRS position is currently of the 'wait and see' variety, since the Second Life style of object ownership is currently an aberration, and Congress is quite visibly trying to make up its mind on the topic.
Which brings me to a point that a lot of/.ers seem to miss, and a lot of American people in general also seem to miss. The IRS is a part of the Treasury, which is a Cabinet-level department of the Executive branch of the US government. the IRS does not write or approve the tax law (though the IRS General Counsel includes tax writers who are called upon by the Congress from time to time to produce language intended to have some stated effect), they admisister and enforce it. The people at the IRS are doing as the law directs, and the horror stories you hear over the next few years should be laid at the feet of Max Baucus rather than Mark Everson. Of course, anyone thinking of breaking Godwin's Law at this point should be ashamed of themselves.
>Killing in cold blood is wrong, even when done by the State.
Killing of human beings, per se, is wrong. No argument there. However, in a system of law, you will find times that this particular wrong is excused. Further, there are times when societies, as a whole, determine to practice it. That has happened in this partiular case.
Individuals are sanctioned for killing 'in cold blood', because that is a function of society via the apparatus of the State. Procedures are followed, decisions are reached, sentences are carried out. Just as it may be excusable for one person to delete another in the heat of the moment, it is absolutely inexcusable for a State to do so without forethought and calculation.
Let's be clear. This is not going to happen. Full stop. Because of its structure, the UN is wholly incapable of any action that does not have the unanimous support (defined as lack of opposition) of the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China. Consider the interests of these 5 parties, and now you see why the UN does nothing that has any actual teeth. Surrendering the oversight of ICANN to any foreign body runs counter to US interests. Therefore, it will not happen.
The second person genitive pronoun is your (your mom, your fault, your problem), and it is dependent. The determinative (independent noun phrase) form is yours, with no apostrophe.
Barney, the beloved purple dinosaur, is a myth, or at least only true for a certain value of beloved.
Said saurian is essentially an oversized stuffed animal who delivers age-appropriate pablum to small children without any of the redeeming wit of a Sesame Street, which at least recognizes that parents often wind up parked in front of this stuff too, or at least exposed to it indirectly.
In short, beloved perhaps by children, but not so much by their elders.
Is it just me, or does the main thrust of the bill seem to be the establishment of a compulsory license for digital music, with rates to be set by the Copyright Judges, and a specifically royalty-free license for 'traditional radio' style streams?
I recognize that the confidentiality provisions regarding royalty payments seem odious, but I do not completely understand them, and I am similarly suspicious of the Board, composed as it is of interested parties with 15%+ market share.
That the WoW people may have borrowed the concept (disclosure: I don't play World of Warcraft, nor have I ever) doesn't make this use of the verb any less legitimate. People have been hamstringing each other from the moment Thug saw Og get bit in the back of the leg, and Thug figured out that maybe that's why Og couldn't walk so well anymore.
Some people, (and TFP) seem to think that this move by the founders represents some sort of evil plot to dodge FICA taxes on their compensation. And so we have a couple links.
First, this is the IRM section that deals with stock options and FICA taxes. It's worth a read, especially the bit where the Service's position regarding FICA/FUTA etc, is laid out, and the temporary and permanent regulations indefinitely forestalling the formal adoption of the position.
Second,This piece of political grandstanding (scroll down to secion 162(m)) is the reason so many corporate presidents have bizarre compensation packages. Note the the $1,000,000 figure was set by the Clinton administration in 1993, and has not been updated since. (This is much like the AMT, but that is an issue for another time.)
Finally, you will recall that Social Security is, to a non-trivial extent, a means-tested benefit program. Google's founders are going to be on the receiving end of every punitive modification to the program made "to ensure that it is fair". That this might lead to a certain reluctance to fund it is not surprising. OTOH, we are only talking about $6885 in FICA taxes, if that really is the issue, which I doubt.
Personally, I agree with the other posters who think this is Jobsesque PR.
I would be highly skeptical of the one-off line about the IRS and mis-used computing time. IRS workstations are loaded with one version or another of the COE, or Common Operating Environment. This is a custom version of one of a couple versions of Windows, along with a stack of over-expensive applications. Highlights include:
Adobe Acrobat
Accessory Manager
Microsoft Office
Hummingbird Exceed
Stop OnDemand
Anything that doesn't seem needful gets removed, most especially including games.
As an aside, OpenOffice was considered for use in the COE, and was rejected based on a Gartner study that said it would be more expensive to use, as psychotic as that sounds, and I know who has the paperwork to prove it.
You are being deliberately obtuse. If you read the referenced publication, individuals are not barred from being EROs. It's just not good business sense to operate a tax business as a sole-proprietor.
Transmitting a return to the IRS is going to require some kind of software, which has to be written by someone, no matter how fine you split the hairs.
Disclaimer: I work for the IRS, in BMF Adjustments. I am not employed by you as a tax professional. This is not tax advice.
That out of the way, there have been two big assertions made about the way e-file works, with varying degrees of veracity. I will address them each in turn.
Assertion 1.The IRS is prohibited by law from offering a free efile package (either web-based or PC based)
Sort of: This is a decision that is more or less up to Messers Bush and Snow, not Everson. In general, the US goverment doesn't like to compete against private industry based on two predictions about the goverment product:
It would suck at first.
Everyone would use it anyway, and so it would suck forever.
Assertion 2.Lobbyists have kept a Free and Open solution from being offered by keeping the specifications secret and only allowing evil corporations to know how to submit returns.
False: The steps and specs are carefully hidden away in the brightly colored Pub 3112(pdf) and others, such as the equally shiny Pub 1345 (pdf)(The actual specs for the 1040 are in the dead-tree-only Pub 1346)
Exercise for the reader:
Get some friends together and write a tax preparation package in whatever language and whatever license you want (No extra credit given for ironically titled packages written in Malbolge or Brainf--- and distributed under the new X11 License). Found an LLC under the laws of your state. File Forms 8832 and 2553 with the IRS to be recognized as a Subchapter S Corporation (as a measure to avoid the hassles and shared liabilities of being a partnership).
Figure out the mysterious Step 2 (Hint: Getting recognized as an ERO, and coming up with a business model are likely involved)
Profit!
----
Note: If you have an unwavering faith in the idea that the IRS is evil, then you misunderstand. The IRS is a bureau. As a whole, the Service has absolutely no emotional investment in being either kind or unkind to the taxpayer. Everything the IRS does is prescribed in 26 USC by the Congress. If the law says charge a penalty, we charge it. If the law says grant credit interest on late refunds, we grant it. If the law required that each US Citizen send us a chicken in lieu of a 1040 (it doesn't), then we'd collect 'em. All the same to us.
Actually, this is not true. The story you remember reading was about an accounting firm that outsourced return preparation to India. Return processing by the Treasury is done in the US at the 10 campuses, like so:
A lot of the questions posted have focused on either your two books, or on your Star Trek career, so I diverge. What can you tell us about working on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? I realize that as a VO source, you aren't exactly writing storyboards (unless, of course, you are) but I am curious nonetheless
In an unrelated note, have you seen any improvement from WFS since Dancing Barefoot?
>What part of "well regulated" is hard to understand?
The bit where people forget that at the time the Constitution was penned, the term 'well regulated' was a reference to the idea of 'regular troops', i.e. those that can shoot straight, as specifically opposed to 'irregular troops' (conscript farmers with the accuracy of stormtroopers). The idea was not that the militia should necessarily be a restricted arm of the State, but that the common defense required a militia that can hit what it is aiming at.
OK, this article is way light on details, so let me fill you in on the Way Things Are:
Currently, IRS data is stored in several large databases, which are seperate from each other, and are collectively referred to as 'the master file' This financial Voltron is made up of:
The IMF (Individual Master File, your taxes go here, mostly.
The BMF (Business Master File, your company's taxes go here, mostly)
The EPMF (Employee Plan Master File. This is where ERISA lives, but your 401(k) is on the BMF)
The IRAF (Individual Retirement Arrangement File. Your IRA and its freinds live here)
The NMF (Non-Master File. Anything so weird it has to be on paper lives here. This is also a stopping point for assessments that need to be relabeled, and the source of all things Prompt.)
The Master File is updated weekly, and is otherwise read only. Workspace is provided in a number of support files:
The TIF (Taxpayer Information File. This is the working copy of data being worked on. Up until January of 2004, there were 10 of these, one at each campus. Now there are 2, one at MCC for IMF, and one at TCC for Everything Else.)
The GUF (Generalized Unpostables File. If something screwey happens, this is where it goes to get fixed. Returns filed with scads of missing money, impossible adjustments, date mismatches, statute flubs, et cetera ad nauseum all end up here.
For manipulatinga ll this data, there are several specialized systems.
IDRS (Integrated Data Retrieval System) is a UTS 20/60 session into a Unisys mainframe, and is the mainstay of Accounts Management.
ACS (Automated Collection System) is similar, but is intended for the Compliance audience.
AIMS (Audit Information Management System) is the window you never want your SSN to show up in.
ICP and ICS are 2 X applications (via Exceed) that provide incomplete graphical frontends to the text-based sytems above.
The CADE Project is attempting to replace all of this. These systems interact with each other already, and so CADE must attempt to define its own internal interfaces while maintaining the ability to converse with the existing systems. This is why even the first migration (partial migration of the IMF, 1040EZ filers only) has been delayed over and over again. Even this isn't the end of the alphabet soup. There are still payments (ISRP, LBX, RRPS, RPS, MD, EFTPS, FTD) to consider, and metainformation (EONS and its many children) to be collected, among other things I have no doubt forgotten in a sea of COBOL fumes.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so much. This is holdover terminology from the Cold War.
One can only assume the proposal was made by Bloody Stupid Johnson.
Full Disclosure: I work for the IRS, and have a business need to take OUO or SBU data outside of the campus where I work from time to time.
Glossary:
The article here is pure scaremongering, though it does at least touch on some of the procedures the Service used to secure taxpayer data. The article makes the following points.
When a laptop is issued, it gets whole disk encryption that can't be turned off by the user. Similarly, when the IRS issues other portable devices, they get the same. The rule, of course, is that you don''t hook up anything the IRS doesn't own to anything it does, so personal thumb drives and home networks should not be an issue, and we make the point every time we issue hardware. Similarly, the article talks about unencrypted drives on Campus machinery, but if someone has penetrated the physical security of the Campus and actually swipes one of these hard drives, things have already gone horribly wrong.
If the IRS lost a great whacking load of SBU data, of course it would be a disaster, this is nothing new, and is obvious. The article makes it seem like it's inevitable or in immediate danger of happening, and this just isn't true.
There is no 0.99999(&c) == 1 argument. It is a fact.
Lemma:The set of Real Numbers is dense
Meaning:For any two Real Numbers A & B such that A > B, there exists a Real Number C such that C > B and A > C.
Claim: The number N, defined as 0.99999(&c) is infinitely close to 1 without actually being equal to 1.
Meaning:Define a Real Number N such that for any number A such that 1 > A and A != N, N > A. We claim that N != 1
Mandated industry ratings boards are, at best, marketing tools, and worse, a mechanism for making an end run around the Constitution. Note here that the 'mandate' can come from the government, or as a result of threatened government action (as was the case with the ESRB, the MPAA, and, to a certain extent, the CCA)
The exmple of the MPAA rating system is the most instructive. The groups that applied the pressures which indirectly caused the creation of the MPAA ratings system were not interested in informed choice. They were interested in stamping out 'objectionable material'. Ratings allowed this to happen on a much greater scale than before. Where previously, a fundie/fascist/parents'/'children's' group would have had to picket, letter-write, or generally raise a stink about each title directly, now it was just a simple matter of applying pressure on the theaters to never show anything that carried an "X" ("X" is now "NC-17", apparently because someone neglected to trademark "X" in total ignorance of the market forces that move porn) As a result, "R" grew to encompass most of "X/NC-17" and the latter rating became a commercial kiss of death. Substitute "M" for "R" and "AO" for "X/NC-17" and you see the same thing happening again, just with games instead of movies and Wal-Mart in place of National Amusements (Sony, as always, plays itself) . The 'top' rating becomes tiny and de facto banned, and the 'second' rating covers everything that should have been in the 'top', because the 'top' becomes a convenient label for anything that will corrupt your children, grow hair in strange places and give you scoliosis.
She looked up at him, and asked, "And what of Jack Thompson?"
"He will continue to be my implacable enemy, lending his pen to every plot against me."
She started to reply, but caught herself as a sudden realization struck. "And how will you repay him for this service?" she asked.
He smiled. "With gold, and land, and boys. He is a simple man. All he desires are land, and gold, and boys."
With apologies to George R. R. Martin
.Yep. 26 USC 61 defines what is taxable income, and uses the phrase "from whatever source derived". 26 USC 1 imposes the tax itself on individuals, estates and trusts. 26 USC 11 does the same for corporations.
While I cannot be cretain about point #5, unless you are referring to something on the order of md5 sums for packages, I submit to you that portage (as used by Gentoo) does all these things.
Flood protection. Isn't that ironic.
"Give us the marks and shut up. In return, we will:
In the alternative, we can crush you in court and drain your bank accounts along the way. Additionally, you could then be sure that you'll never be paid for any Beatles track that travels by Internet."
The Beatles are 40 years old, and need iTMS much more than it needs them.At the moment, the only virtual goods with any intrinsic potentially taxable value are those in Second Life and other worlds which grant actual ownership of objects to players. In these kinds of situations, there may be barter consequences, but only if there is a way to actually determine the $US value of the object. Consequently, it is possible to incur a deductable expense in the creation of such object, and in general it will behave like any other intangible capital asset, including the existence of a basis, if such can be properly documented.
In 'more traditional' games where the EULA says 'we own your character, your stuff, and your little dog too', then the in-game objects are worthless. This has two consequences. First, sale of such an object for real cash results in a taxable event as a source of ordinary income rather than capital income. Second, in-game exchanges are non-events, as everything involved is worthless.
Bear in mind that these are all potential treatments, and that the IRS position is currently of the 'wait and see' variety, since the Second Life style of object ownership is currently an aberration, and Congress is quite visibly trying to make up its mind on the topic.
Which brings me to a point that a lot of /.ers seem to miss, and a lot of American people in general also seem to miss. The IRS is a part of the Treasury, which is a Cabinet-level department of the Executive branch of the US government. the IRS does not write or approve the tax law (though the IRS General Counsel includes tax writers who are called upon by the Congress from time to time to produce language intended to have some stated effect), they admisister and enforce it. The people at the IRS are doing as the law directs, and the horror stories you hear over the next few years should be laid at the feet of Max Baucus rather than Mark Everson. Of course, anyone thinking of breaking Godwin's Law at this point should be ashamed of themselves.
>Killing in cold blood is wrong, even when done by the State.
Killing of human beings, per se, is wrong. No argument there. However, in a system of law, you will find times that this particular wrong is excused. Further, there are times when societies, as a whole, determine to practice it. That has happened in this partiular case.
Individuals are sanctioned for killing 'in cold blood', because that is a function of society via the apparatus of the State. Procedures are followed, decisions are reached, sentences are carried out. Just as it may be excusable for one person to delete another in the heat of the moment, it is absolutely inexcusable for a State to do so without forethought and calculation.
Let's be clear. This is not going to happen. Full stop. Because of its structure, the UN is wholly incapable of any action that does not have the unanimous support (defined as lack of opposition) of the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China. Consider the interests of these 5 parties, and now you see why the UN does nothing that has any actual teeth. Surrendering the oversight of ICANN to any foreign body runs counter to US interests. Therefore, it will not happen.
The second person genitive pronoun is your (your mom, your fault, your problem), and it is dependent. The determinative (independent noun phrase) form is yours, with no apostrophe.
Barney, the beloved purple dinosaur, is a myth, or at least only true for a certain value of beloved.
Said saurian is essentially an oversized stuffed animal who delivers age-appropriate pablum to small children without any of the redeeming wit of a Sesame Street, which at least recognizes that parents often wind up parked in front of this stuff too, or at least exposed to it indirectly.
In short, beloved perhaps by children, but not so much by their elders.
Is it just me, or does the main thrust of the bill seem to be the establishment of a compulsory license for digital music, with rates to be set by the Copyright Judges, and a specifically royalty-free license for 'traditional radio' style streams?
I recognize that the confidentiality provisions regarding royalty payments seem odious, but I do not completely understand them, and I am similarly suspicious of the Board, composed as it is of interested parties with 15%+ market share.
That the WoW people may have borrowed the concept (disclosure: I don't play World of Warcraft, nor have I ever) doesn't make this use of the verb any less legitimate. People have been hamstringing each other from the moment Thug saw Og get bit in the back of the leg, and Thug figured out that maybe that's why Og couldn't walk so well anymore.
First, this is the IRM section that deals with stock options and FICA taxes. It's worth a read, especially the bit where the Service's position regarding FICA/FUTA etc, is laid out, and the temporary and permanent regulations indefinitely forestalling the formal adoption of the position.
Second,This piece of political grandstanding (scroll down to secion 162(m)) is the reason so many corporate presidents have bizarre compensation packages. Note the the $1,000,000 figure was set by the Clinton administration in 1993, and has not been updated since. (This is much like the AMT, but that is an issue for another time.)
Finally, you will recall that Social Security is, to a non-trivial extent, a means-tested benefit program. Google's founders are going to be on the receiving end of every punitive modification to the program made "to ensure that it is fair". That this might lead to a certain reluctance to fund it is not surprising. OTOH, we are only talking about $6885 in FICA taxes, if that really is the issue, which I doubt.
Personally, I agree with the other posters who think this is Jobsesque PR.
- Adobe Acrobat
- Accessory Manager
- Microsoft Office
- Hummingbird Exceed
- Stop OnDemand
Anything that doesn't seem needful gets removed, most especially including games.As an aside, OpenOffice was considered for use in the COE, and was rejected based on a Gartner study that said it would be more expensive to use, as psychotic as that sounds, and I know who has the paperwork to prove it.
Transmitting a return to the IRS is going to require some kind of software, which has to be written by someone, no matter how fine you split the hairs.
That out of the way, there have been two big assertions made about the way e-file works, with varying degrees of veracity. I will address them each in turn.
Assertion 1.The IRS is prohibited by law from offering a free efile package (either web-based or PC based)
Sort of: This is a decision that is more or less up to Messers Bush and Snow, not Everson. In general, the US goverment doesn't like to compete against private industry based on two predictions about the goverment product:
Assertion 2.Lobbyists have kept a Free and Open solution from being offered by keeping the specifications secret and only allowing evil corporations to know how to submit returns.
False: The steps and specs are carefully hidden away in the brightly colored Pub 3112(pdf) and others, such as the equally shiny Pub 1345 (pdf)(The actual specs for the 1040 are in the dead-tree-only Pub 1346)
Exercise for the reader:
- Get some friends together and write a tax preparation package in whatever language and whatever license you want (No extra credit given for ironically titled packages written in Malbolge or Brainf--- and distributed under the new X11 License). Found an LLC under the laws of your state. File Forms 8832 and 2553 with the IRS to be recognized as a Subchapter S Corporation (as a measure to avoid the hassles and shared liabilities of being a partnership).
- Figure out the mysterious Step 2 (Hint: Getting recognized as an ERO, and coming up with a business model are likely involved)
- Profit!
----Note: If you have an unwavering faith in the idea that the IRS is evil, then you misunderstand. The IRS is a bureau. As a whole, the Service has absolutely no emotional investment in being either kind or unkind to the taxpayer. Everything the IRS does is prescribed in 26 USC by the Congress. If the law says charge a penalty, we charge it. If the law says grant credit interest on late refunds, we grant it. If the law required that each US Citizen send us a chicken in lieu of a 1040 (it doesn't), then we'd collect 'em. All the same to us.
- Andover: Individual
- Atlanta: Individual
- Austin: Individual
- Brookhaven: Individual
- Cincinnati: Business
- Fresno: Individual
- Kansas City: Individual
- Memphis: Individual
- Ogden: Business
- Philadelphia: Individual and International
All ten are in the US, last I checked.In an unrelated note, have you seen any improvement from WFS since Dancing Barefoot?
The bit where people forget that at the time the Constitution was penned, the term 'well regulated' was a reference to the idea of 'regular troops', i.e. those that can shoot straight, as specifically opposed to 'irregular troops' (conscript farmers with the accuracy of stormtroopers). The idea was not that the militia should necessarily be a restricted arm of the State, but that the common defense required a militia that can hit what it is aiming at.
OK, this article is way light on details, so let me fill you in on the Way Things Are:
Currently, IRS data is stored in several large databases, which are seperate from each other, and are collectively referred to as 'the master file' This financial Voltron is made up of:
The Master File is updated weekly, and is otherwise read only. Workspace is provided in a number of support files:
For manipulatinga ll this data, there are several specialized systems.
The CADE Project is attempting to replace all of this. These systems interact with each other already, and so CADE must attempt to define its own internal interfaces while maintaining the ability to converse with the existing systems. This is why even the first migration (partial migration of the IMF, 1040EZ filers only) has been delayed over and over again. Even this isn't the end of the alphabet soup. There are still payments (ISRP, LBX, RRPS, RPS, MD, EFTPS, FTD) to consider, and metainformation (EONS and its many children) to be collected, among other things I have no doubt forgotten in a sea of COBOL fumes.