2 links, 1 post

A list post, if you will.


First up is a reminder why the IRS is a rogue and un-accountable agency and should be abolished.


The agency has apparently targeted tens of thousands of small businesses with form letters asking them whether they have under-reported cash revenues. There is no rhyme nor reason as to who gets these letters and why they are getting them so the implication is clearly that these businesses have, indeed, not been compliant with the tax code and thus time, money and resources are expended by Mom and Pops when they clearly do not have these in ample supply in order to answer the IRS and their baseless implied accusations.


At the link, here, is Entrepreneur’s “5 Reason the IRS’s New Focus on Small Businesses is Ridiculously Egregious.”

4. The IRS isn’t transparent.

Want to know how the IRS has determined that your business might be underreporting cash sales? Tough. Clearly there is an algorithm based on reporting from banks and credit-card companies, but the IRS isn’t offering the extent that data is used. In fact, it is offering very little. It only says that the businesses receiving the letters have reported cash sales that are “unusually low.” It is difficult to refute any accusation when you don’t know what information went into it in the first place. Is it based just on the percentage of cash sales? Does the algorithm take into account the average size of a transaction? Are some sectors being targeted more than others? Business owners know nothing about why they are getting these letters.

The sooner we get to a flat tax or some sort of national sales/consumption tax and put these bureaucratic thugs permanently out of business, the better.







We haven’t blogged about the worst energy idea ever in a while and having said that, we’ll let FreedomWorks do the heavy lifting for us in their latest: "Top Ten Reasons to Eliminate Renewable Fuel Standards."


Central to the article is the political class policy taste-maker’s unhealthy and unholy obsession with ethanol. What's not to like about about a massively tax payer-subsidized alternative fuel that bad for your car’s engine (alcohol), is not as energy efficient as gasoline, has a larger carbon footprint with respect to producing and bringing ethanol to market than gasoline and is responsible for driving up food prices worldwide in an increasingly hungry planet?


Yeah, insert locker room humor as to what your buddy sees in what is clearly his mean, unforgiving and ball-busting girlfriend. It’s gotta be something, huh?


Well, in the case of ethanol we know what that something is: a hugely disproportionately powerful farm lobby and the hugely disproportionately powerful Iowa Caucus as one of the first events on the Presidential primary calendar every 4 years, where no candidate in either party is going to come out against ethanol subsidies and the renewable fuel standards to which it is wed.

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