A little knowledge and research here would go a long way.
First, the Business Census is *not* Obamacare related, it’s been happening for years.
Second, it is done every five years ( vs. 10 year cycle for individuals) offset by 2 years for the Census for individuals.
Next - yes, the IRS has almost all of the financial info, the post office and SSA have all the rest from your payroll tax returns. The only thing they ‘catch’ are new businesses that have not yet filed a return.
This thread is borderline hysterical...my view is that the government already has all of this info, so just reguritating it for a different set of bureaucrats to make *their* chart series out of it is no big deal. One thing that comes out of it is adjustments to the Birth/Death model in the Establishment Survey used in the monthly jobs and unemployment data such as that released on the first Friday of each month.
Why do they collect it separately? Think ‘Silo Mentality’. IRS doesn’t share with SSA and vice versa; CIA doesn’t share with FBI; and *nobody+ is going to share with the Census Bureau within government. Why? That would jeopardize good paying union civil servant jobs. Each department has their own bloated staff to accumulate the same data over and over again.
If you’ve already submitted to the tyranny of filing tax returns, sending the Business Census back in is no big deal...it’s the *least+ of you’re worries.
Do yourself a favor and send it in and spare yourself the pain in the ___ of getting first phone calls then fines and penalty notices then visits from
Census takers...real ones who do it for a living, not the minimum wage boneheads they hire once per decade when they have to gear up to count people....
The Census can't get any information about specific people from the IRS or other government agencies (and vice-versa; IRS, FBI, etc. can't get information about you from the Census).
I have little hope anyone will believe me (despite the fact I've worked for the Census), but there is in fact no giant networked central computer full of your info that all government agencies are constantly putting info into and getting info out. I know people figure this MUST exist but each government agency has it's own (often crappy and antiquated) IT and database system.
Do you recommend the same thing for the American Community Survey that is allegedly mandatory as well?