Stack was upset that §1706 did precisely what it was designed to do: Deprive him of the chance to exploit independent contractor status to avoid paying taxes through non-filing or through the understatement of income, overstatement of deductions, and avoidance of income tax withholding.
In spite of the overwhelming advantages attendant to employee status, Joe Stack desperately wanted to be treated as an independent contractor for one simple reason: It would have made his tax protesting easier.4
Footnotes:
¹ We have met many taxpayers who worked as independent contractors for years without so much as a peep of protest until they realized, ex post facto, that it might have better for them to have been treated as employees. In our experience, workers tend to be content with their independent contractor status until one of the following happens:
They get fired or quit
They get hurt on the job
They get sued for something they did while on the job
They need a bank loan (and employment verification)
² If Stack had been an independent contractor and was subsequently “fired” by his principal, my hunch is it would have taken him less time to file a claim for unemployment compensation than it takes Apolo Ohno to finish short track.
³ Indeed, §1706 was included in TRA ‘86 because the CBO had estimated that the government was losing up to 30% of taxes because independent contractors were either not reporting all of their income on their tax returns or were claiming fraudulent or questionable deductions against that income.
4 Like all tax protestors, Stack knew that once the IRS had collected his taxes through payroll withholding it would never give it back to him based on previously refuted tax protestor arguments. Consequently, his only chance of avoiding taxes was to control his own tax payments and then use his frivolous arguments to evade or at least defer paying taxes.
Group items tagged
Far right unites in European initiative - UK Politics - UK - The Independent#access_tok... - 0 views
Anger at Coalition's plan to limit right to legal aid - UK Politics, UK - The Independent - 0 views
A New Declaration Of Independence: Impeach Obama Now - 0 views
Laurie Penny: It's not rhetoric to draw parallels with Nazism - Commentators - Opinion ... - 0 views
The myth of "independent" voters - Democratic Party - Salon.com - 0 views
-
Understanding the all-powerful bloc that Democrats are chasing, self-destructively.
Free Republic - 0 views
Tax Bomber Stack Wanted Independent Contractor Status to Avoid Paying Taxes - 0 views
-
Enacted in 1978, §530 is a safe harbor law that lists several conditions which if met allows workers to be treated as independent contractors rather than employees.\n\n Joe Stack was compelled to burn his house down, murder his wife and children and fly his airplane into the side of a federal building because 24 years ago Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that added sub-section (d) to §530 thereby excluding engineers and computer programmers from the safe harbor provisions of §530 .\n\nThe passage of this law (§1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986) did not as some have suggested make all engineers and computer programmers employees, it merely made them subject to the 20 factor common law test historically used for determination of a worker's status. In other words, had Joe Stack been truly independent from the company or companies to whom he provided services, he could have, should have and would have been treated as an independent contractor rather than an employee.
Robert Fisk in Manama: Bahrain - an uprising on the verge of revolution - Middle East, ... - 0 views
Boff Whalley: 'In defence of anarchy' - UK Politics, UK - The Independent - 0 views
-
It's the catch-all term that's being used to describe this week's riots. But is this really anarchy? Not even close, says Chumbawumba's Boff Whalley, a self-professed anarchist
The Trouble With Independents | The New Republic - 0 views
-
What if these voters are just a clueless horde?
Return to Tahrir Square: Egypt erupts in protest - Africa, World - The Independent - 0 views
-
Hundreds of thousands of protesters packed into Cairo's Tahrir Square yesterday for one of the biggest anti-government demonstrations since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February. As suspicions over the conduct of the ruling military council continued to simmer, crowds of people surged into the iconic Downtown plaza in scenes not witnessed on a similar scale since the deposed leader was ousted nearly five months ago. The rally was boosted by the official support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political organisation, which until now has refused to take part in most of the protests that have happened since February. A large number of the country's other political groups and parties also backed the rally. There were similar protests across the country, including in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria. But it was in Tahrir Square where the greatest numbers gathered. Tens of thousands of men, women and children arrived throughout the day carrying Egyptian flags and banners, and by the afternoon central Cairo was awash in a sea of street vendors, tents and ebullient slogans.
FDL Book Salon Welcomes Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: A Declaration for Independence... - 0 views
-
If, as Lessig conclusively demonstrates, Congress is indifferent to the will of the people and to democratic debate - because it has been captured by monied interests to whose interests it exclusively attends - then the people lose the ability to affect what government does in any realm. It doesn't make much difference which problem you believe is most pressing: this is the dynamic that lies at the heart of it. Inaction on climate issues is due to the power of polluters and energy companies; the power of the private health insurance industry blocks fundamental health-care reform; endless war and civil liberties abuses are sustained by the power of the surveillance and National Security State industries; and a failure to achieve real Wall Street reform is due to the fact that, as Sen. Dick Durbin amazingly acknowledged about the institution in which he serves, "the banks frankly own the place." Without finding an effective way to address that overarching problem, the only recourse for citizens becomes either passive acceptance of their powerlessness (i.e., apathy and withdrawal) or disruption and unrest fomented outside of the electoral system (the driving ethos of OccupyWallStreet).
Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Indepe... - 0 views
-
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world - Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more - have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world. It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people - mostly children - couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."
Catalonia, Spain and Independence - 0 views
-
The opponents of Catalan independence have accused the move of racist or elitist people, and they argue that the majority of the public in Catalonia does not support the self-sufficiency
1 - 18 of 18
Showing 20▼ items per page