Today on WalletPop
A new way to earn some extra money: IRS informant – The IRS pays people a portion of the money collected from tax cheats when you give them information that helps catch the fraudsters.
Fast food employee highlights credit card risk – Little machines called “skimmers” make it easy for people to steal your credit card [...]
40 days of Frivolous Tax Arguments: Compliance with an administrative summons issued by the IRS is voluntary.
IRS sends taxpayer an administrative summons. Taxpayer claims that responding and complying is voluntary. Not so. A summons is a command to appear, testify, and produce documents, and the IRS is authorized to issue one. The district courts will enforce the summons, if necessary. And yes, there can be criminal penalties. [...]
40 days of Frivolous Tax Arguments: The IRS must prepare federal tax returns for a person who fails to file.
Supporters of this bogus theory say that it’s the IRS’s responsibility to prepare and file a tax return for them if they don’t file. But the tax law really says that if someone doesn’t file their return, the IRS can prepare their return (i.e. make up numbers for the person). It doesn’t say that the [...]
Create your own MLM in ten easy steps
Written by me at Walletpop…
Hundreds of thousands of Americans get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies each year. From Mary Kay to Amway to Herbalife to PrePaid Legal, the list is seemingly endless. Each offers its own special spin on the products it sells, but the main focus of an MLM is on recruiting new [...]
On stealing money from people
Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story about a woman who had lost her life’s savings because of an old cashier’s check that JP Morgan Chase wouldn’t honor.
The story goes like this: Willie Floyd is 82 years old. She had a cashier’s check for $19,700 that was in a safe deposit box. The money [...]
40 days of Frivolous Tax Arguments: Taxpayers can reduce their federal income tax liability by filing a “zero return.”
This one is at least a little creative. File a tax return showing no taxable income, and your taxes are zero. That would work if you really have no income. But since most of us have W-2s and 1099s and such, that “zero income” return is actually false… and you really do owe taxes.
Don’t you [...]
40 days of Frivolous Tax Arguments: Payment of tax is voluntary.
Like yesterday’s bunk, this false assertion relies upon the idea that taxes are voluntary. Again, the concept that our tax system is based upon voluntary assessment and payment. But that doesn’t mean that taxes are voluntary all together. It means that taxpayers give up their information and tell the IRS how much they’re supposed to [...]
