IRS and Star Trek

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IRS & Star Trek

Corporations often have creative ways of having their employees unwind. You have to admit – there is something that makes one smile when imagining the effort and camaraderie involved in producing a Star Trek episode. Until you get to the cost. There was $50,000 spent on the Star Trek and the Cuban dance shuffle. Hmmm. Great for fitness, great for morale perhaps, but not for promoting fiscal responsibility.

The conference took place in Anaheim for 2700 IRS personnel. This 2010 conference reportedly cost $4 million. That’s taxpayer money. AND, it’s not a corporation. Corporations have boards, stock owners, investors and market watchers that micro-manage the bottom line.

This is the agency that is responsible for the enforcement of collection and distribution, but was on the front line for sequester cuts. This is the agency now being blamed for targeted abuse by singling out specific organizations. This is the one agency that does put fear into those that, by choice, break the law through increasingly more advanced methods of tax avoidance. Unfortunately, the latter is required.

So what does all of this tell you? It’s very complicated. No one has done anything wrong. People are working within the system. Let’s help them by instituting a simpler tax system, removing the stress, making the process more accountable and transparent and help transfer this human talent pool to sectors that are more beneficial for America.

There’s not as many ‘bad’ people in the IRS as what the media is reporting. The entire system needs scrapped – soon.

Imagine hearing JFK shouting “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of producing a tax system that effectively collects tax revenue and returns it to those in need, in the most effective means possible.” Like any kid that lived through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo era – I believe in the impossible.

Mark Schuster, Partner

June 3, 2013

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