Big Brother

With all of the talk about the new level of government snooping and data accumulation on everyone, it's a good time to remind you that this is nothing new for the Federal government. IRS has long been maintaining top secret files on every person and business in the country. They are called Individual Master Files (IMF) and Business Master Files (BMF) respectively.

Just as with credit records, these files often contain erroneous information that can lead to serious problems. Since our rulers have always considered tax revenues more important than anything else, IRS has always been allowed to ignore the normal constitutional protections that are available for every other aspect of life in this country. It is no exaggeration to say that the two snipers who were murdering people in the DC area have more rights and protections before they are sent to prison or executed than do people in matters with IRS. There is no presumption of innocence in tax matters and IRS is allowed to do its worst to people without any due process.

That's why it's not a bad idea to file a Freedom of Information request to obtain a copy of your file. There are some other sites on the web that have the forms and instructions for doing this, and will file the requests and decode the reports, for a fee.
IMF Help
IRS Decoder

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 11/28/2002 07:23:00 PM Send this post: