smkellat

The Improper Payments Act report shows just under $19 billion was lost in improper EITC payments in FY2018. NASA’s FY2018 budget was $20.7 billion just to compare the scale of the loss. Every little bit of fraud, waste, and abuse does add up to something quite large in the aggregate.

ProPublica is asking the wrong questions. They should be asking what we should do with refundable tax credit programs that have such high error rates in payments. What we’re doing currently isn’t working best.

“...and since one can’t ask a stranger to fund him...”

That’s been a solved issue since at least the 17th century with joint stock companies. What else is an IPO but asking strangers for money so you can do business?

My city is looking at a total 5G ban. A city charter re-write is going to be needed to topple the current municipal administration. Moving to non-partisan elections would probably help since some of the current city council incumbents either didn’t graduate high school or only graduated high school over 50 years ago. Party structures protected those incumbents with this literally disconnected population.

Since when is a tropical storm a minor concern? That’s one of the stranger assertions to wake up to on a Saturday morning. The National Weather Service maintains a nice list of EAS event codes here: https://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/eventcodes.html

47 CFR 11.31 defines the AFSK signal used for transmitting EAS alerts. The encoder settings are unique enough to not be accidentally used in any regular setting. For emergency planning purposes especially in lessons learned post-Katrina, avoiding alert fatigue was deemed by internal & external evaluators as being critical. The cited code section is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/11.31

As for being artistic, sometimes there are boundaries. This is one that shouldn’t be crossed.

The LA basin supports over 10 million people. Cut its water supply and the missing water has to be made up somewhere. I know full well it LA is 6 hours away from Silicon Valley but make LA run dry on water and CA-wide water restrictions would only get harsher. Remember that Silicon Valley still has a human population to support, too.

Desalination has been the technological breakthrough of next Tuesday for most of my life. I’ll be happy to see an actual deployment. Until then we wait.

No dam at Boulder City in Nevada and the Los Angeles basin becomes a very different story in terms of habitability. The town of St. Thomas would rise again and we’d find that missing B-29 that ditched into what is currently the very artificial Lake Mead. The Colorado River would regain its natural flow.

Silicon Valley would die, though. Where on earth does its water come from? Yes, 85% of the water from Lake Mead. The Los Angeles basin is built up far beyond its natural sustainable water capacity. Unless there is a great leap forward in desalination technology some dams remain a rather necessary evil.

The Administrative Procedures Act provides great processes to express yourself. I highly doubt this Petition for Rulemaking would proceed to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The Commission rarely conducts proceedings to adopt or change rules in Part 97 since 2001. I expect a dismissal letter to eventually issue forth more than anything else.

I dumped any “tech” holdings I had and invested in oil tankers as well as bulk shipping. The only thing close to a “tech” stock that I hold now is Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. The portfolio doesn’t fluctuate much and the dividend payouts are very nice.

Dismissing criticisms because they're "technical" in a field of law that is possibly the most hyper-technical is some of the goofiest yet dishonest hand-waving I've ever seen. There is no Magic Money Tree. Even if we liquidate the rich so as to make everybody equally poorer we're not going to collect revenues that will last.

State and Local Tax deduction is limited to $10,000. It isn't eliminated.

Things generally not known by the government: deductions & credits you are eligible to take, any changes to your marital status, changes to your address. Often your government cannot find you, has no idea if you're still single/married/widow, and doesn't have the data for credit eligibility. Besides, you're also assuming perfectly accurate reporting of all data elements on income reporting documents by all payers and employers. We don't even have that now.

It is a nice idea but in practice it would just overcomplicate things. Changing up the Internal Revenue Code is a better way forward.

There is no OCR in play. Real human beings handle code & edit of returns. Real human beings also check for errors at that time, too.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Complaining about what you call a book review by providing a book review is a bit crabby.

Simply put, the IRS doesn't have the data access Hollywood makes it look like they have. There are timeframes for the Combined Annual Wage Reporting joint task force to have the data trickle downstream from SSA to IRS. It isn't immediately available to them which is why there is the so-called "PATH Act hold" that stops any returns claiming EITC or Additional Child Tax Credit from refunding out before February 15th each year now so at least some data is on-hand. As long as some payers & employers can still file income reporting forms on paper, they have an awfully long time after April 15th to get those documents in to IRS too.

There is only one form this year. There is no longer a 1040A or 1040EZ.

Actually, you'd be surprised how little of your life's information is on-hand compared to the eligibility requirements for certain tax credits and benefits. The biggest example is deduction of gambling losses. IRS knows how much you've won (receipt of Form W-2G) but unless you give it an accounting of how much you've lost it has no clue at all.

Was there an option to use an anti-satellite weapon to blow these things out of the sky? These rules have been pretty firm since the 1970s so pleading ignorance just looks bad.

Are there any benefits for a US citizen to locate a startup in either Puerto Rico or USVI for bringing in non-US talent? That is to say, beyond the climate and possibly relaxed tax positions are there benefits?

I just hit "Send to..." in Firefox and send it to a different device than what I am currently using. If I'm using my tablet, I send it to the desktop. If I'm using my desktop, I send it to my tablet.

Eventually many things get tagged in Zotero anyhow.

Well, another hosting provider/domain registrar may be getting intense pressure soon enough it seems.

I'm in a position where I sit behind a keyboard and answer the telephone all day. Nonetheless, I pretty much have the raw power to destroy someone's life financially even at such a low rank in the organization. That we don't have widespread drug testing but do have a problem with rehiring staff who were discharged for misconduct says quite a bit about the organization too.

Oh, there are contingency plans for that. They're pretty easy. Writing down barcode numbers and then doing a mass "check out" event on a whole list when power is back covers things.

In an extended event, some backup supplies on-hand from Brodart to handle things Jersey-style with temporary card pockets is easily doable.

Frankly you get the cataloger(s) out of their office/cubicle/holding pen, sit the cataloger(s) down at the reference desk, and have them work from memory guiding people through the classification system. You won't have the same level of granularity in searching but by general subject you'll be able to get to where you're looking to go. Been there, done that, wrote the plan while I was Cataloger for a community college in an area at risk for tsunamis. Those call numbers are there for a reason and have very important meanings.

I've typed catalog cards. I've maintained a card catalog by hand. My memories aren't nearly as fond as the book review author's. An IBM Selectric is at least still somewhat familiar to me.

I haven't been a proper librarian in years. I miss it. We have a reading comprehension problem in the USA as of late. There are not alternative literacies but rather we gave up on the basics. Literacy should be universal yet isn't.

When your co-workers start getting routinely carted out by emergency workers for cardiac distress, seizures, and other problems developed since they started the job. A job can grind you down and I'm watching my current one eat some co-workers alive. There are limits to how much stress you can put a person through routinely.

I mostly listen to things from the BBC due to the World Service no longer broadcasting to North America as of 2001. There are some CBC programs since the loss of Radio Canada International. Mostly comedies plus The Archers Omnibus.

These are for listening pleasure. CBC & BBC both have comedy of the week podcasts. Because News on CBC is hilarious. Drama of the Week on BBC is good though sometimes off the wall.

I could listen to Larry Kudlow for business reasons but lately I cling tight to my comedies. I need the escape.

Maybe this should never have been something implemented by mere regulation in the first place? The Commission generally disregards bulk comments that repeat the same boilerplate language, has done so for decades, and is looking for logical argument grounded in the law rather than emotional outbursts.

How about getting a bill passed in Congress providing for this? There were opportunities. There can be again in the future. Laws are harder to repeal compared to regulations.

Besides, I was there when the original ECFS was created. Events like this make me miss the days when paper filings were the norm. You had to think harder about what you were going to say compared to today's emails of rage provoked by a comedian. You had to reflect carefully way back when...prior to mid-1997, that is.

Reviewing the Interactive Tax Assistant and/or Publication 17 at the IRS website would probably cure those misconceptions really quick.

It is possible to do so, I suppose, but the results are normally catastrophic financially. You can have levies placed on you if you end up owing $5,000 or more. You can have liens placed on your property if you owe $10,000 or more. You can have your passport revoked nowadays if you owe $50,000 or more.

Avoid the catastrophe.

There is a "perfection" period when things go wrong in e-filing. Granted, you shouldn't have waited until the last moment to file. That being said, you could have called 1-800-829-1040 for guidance on how to fix the problem through either fixing your e-filing or mailing it in with appropriate headings to still be counted on-time.

The main line was slow on the 18th and people had very little wait time. The 19th was much the same. There were an excess of operators who were waiting for calls on the non-specialty line.

Go read Publication 17 for guidance for next year.