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applegrove

(117,885 posts)
Mon Jul 30, 2012, 08:52 PM Jul 2012

"WATCH: Mitt Romney Admits He's Been Audited By The IRS" by Grace Wyler at Business Insider

WATCH: Mitt Romney Admits He's Been Audited By The IRS

by Grace Wyler at Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-tax-returns-audit-irs-video-2012-7

"SNIP................................

Muir: You are here on what some have termed your world audition and democrats, not surprisingly, continue to hammer you back home on taxes, you remain firm two years and two years only. So from what you have released and from what we have seen we know that there was one year when you paid about 13.9% tax rate. Can we clear this up by asking a simple yes or no question? Was there ever any year when you paid lower than 13.9%?

Romney: I haven't calculated that. I'm happy to go back and look but my view is I've paid all the taxes required by law. From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares y taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.

Muir: You said you would go back and look, would you look for us?

Romney: I haven't looked at the tax rate paid year by year. I know that I pay a very substantial amount of taxes and every year since the beginning of my career so far as I can recall.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-tax-returns-audit-irs-video-2012-7#ixzz229nDmnv8
.................................SNIP"
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"WATCH: Mitt Romney Admits He's Been Audited By The IRS" by Grace Wyler at Business Insider (Original Post) applegrove Jul 2012 OP
"I've been audited... chollybocker Jul 2012 #1
Well, truthfully hollysmom Jul 2012 #2
That doesn't make any sense. chollybocker Jul 2012 #3
it had to do with a new law at the time hollysmom Jul 2012 #4

chollybocker

(3,687 posts)
1. "I've been audited...
Mon Jul 30, 2012, 09:03 PM
Jul 2012

"...as happens I think to other citizens as well and..."

He's lying through his teeth. There's no need for him to keep talking and tack on that last part about "other citizens (do it too)."

I bet he's never REALLY been audited. Except by McCain's accountants.

hollysmom

(5,946 posts)
2. Well, truthfully
Mon Jul 30, 2012, 09:37 PM
Jul 2012

I was called in for an audit once, but it was the IRS's fault, they entered my data incorrectly.

However, I worked for a company (ahem sort of, except I got my own contracts and had them paid, so they could pay me so my taxes would be simpler i.e. employee, rather than independent contractor) for tax an accounting purposes that was audited yearly so we would not have to be audited. Don't blame me, congress passed a special tax law for IT specialists and engineers only, that did not allow me to be a one person company. They were trying to force us to work for large consulting firms that would take a large chunk of the contract.

chollybocker

(3,687 posts)
3. That doesn't make any sense.
Mon Jul 30, 2012, 10:08 PM
Jul 2012

Why would you not file as a contractor and take the deductions available to you for office space, supplies, travel, etc.? Your former employer was alone in benefiting from your phony employee status. Also, defeating the IRS at data entry skills would make a great story.

hollysmom

(5,946 posts)
4. it had to do with a new law at the time
Tue Jul 31, 2012, 04:42 PM
Jul 2012


Here is something on the law
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21shulman.html
our Low Tech Tax Code

The story of Section 1706 is a curious one. Most American workers perform jobs as either employees or “self-employed” workers of a company — that is, independent contractors. Yet the common-law test used by the I.R.S. to determine who is an actual employee is vague and unpredictable. The determination is often made years after a worker is hired, during an audit of the company.

If the I.R.S. determines that a self-employed worker should have been an employee, it imposes substantial back taxes, penalties and interest on the hiring company — even if the self-employed worker fully paid his taxes.


The technology industry used many self-employed workers in the 1980s. While in other industries, workers were forced to become self-employed by companies looking to avoid giving out benefits, in technology it was the professionals themselves who demanded contractor status. They were willing to forgo employer-provided benefits to maintain their independence and expand their businesses.

Many of them were not hired by the technology company they did work for, but by staffing firms that placed them at corporations as subcontractors. 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. Soon enough, the I.R.S. began auditing staffing firms around the country, often subjecting their customers to questioning as well.

This caused an upheaval in the technology industry. Hundreds of high-tech firms, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, stopped using self-employed workers. Tens of thousands of technology professionals who had formed their own one-person consulting businesses could no longer find work — unless they agreed to abandon their enterprises and become payroll employees.

“The immediate effect of these audits is to force individual programmers ... to abandon their dreams of getting rich off their high-technology skills,” reported an article in The Times on Section 1706 more than a decade ago. “But the broader impact is that small businesses started by one entrepreneur do not have a chance to grow into mighty enterprises that can create jobs and generate more taxes.”

The rationale for passing Section 1706 was that it would recoup tax revenue that the government was losing from self-employed technology workers who were allegedly cheating when they filed. It was also claimed that few of these workers would qualify as self-employed under the common-law test, so the safe haven should be eliminated for them.

Over the past 20 years, there have been several studies dismissing the factual and legal grounds asserted for the rule, and more than 60 senators — from Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Jesse Helms to Ted Kennedy — have sought its repeal.

A Treasury Department study in 1991 also thoroughly undermined the justifications for the law. It found that tax compliance for technology professionals was actually among the highest of all self-employed workers and that Section 1706 probably raised no additional tax revenue and perhaps even resulted in losses, because self-employed workers did not enjoy as many tax-free benefits as employees.
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