Bullied by the IRS

Washinton Times ^ | 9/26-2013 | Terry Dehko

[FiddlePig]

I’ve always paid my taxes and have never been arrested or charged with any crime in my life. I am a successful small-business man. But in January of this year, I woke up to find that my business’ entire bank account — more than $35,000 — had been wrongly seized.

Later that same day, I was writing checks to my vendors. A federal agent strolls in. She tells me my hard-earned cash was taken by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I was shocked. I’ve broken no law, committed no crime and was never warned my store could be in trouble. I asked her how I can keep managing my business when my account has been seized. She responded, “I don’t care.”

[FiddlePig]

In my observations of history, at least four things are required for the decent into tyranny, (master ”owner” class and serf class)… a direct tax (income tax) on the people, a nationalized “healthcare” system that can require how you eat, drink, drive and live your life (lest it be withheld), corruption of the electoral process and the disarming of the citizenry. In a "rusty" irony, what good are drug wars and RICO laws to fight gangsters, when the government agents charged with enforcing them are now even BIGGER gangsters? I would ask Lois Lerner, but she’d just take the Fifth.

In more “rusty” irony many of my ‘progressive” friends are rightly outraged by the power given to the government by the Patriot Act, yet the IRS has had the same (or more) power for decades. I call it “guilty till they pronounce you guilty”!

[Darteaus94025]

And this is different from Fascism how?

[LachlanMinnesota]

It would be nice to know the outcome of this as to what the IRS’s reasons were.

There always is.

[I want the USA back]

If there’s anybody alive in the USA who still thinks that we live in a constitutional republic with representative democracy, I have a bridge for you in NY.

The current administration is marxist. In their world view, all the means of production should be in the hands of the government. They bitterly resent that anyone can own a business and actually make a profit. They want the money.

When all the means of production are in the hands of the government, then we’re Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and poor.

[Former Proud Canadian]

When a federal agency decides to target a group of people because of their political beliefs (the tea party) and then does so with impunity, all of your rights are forfeit. Welcome to America, 2013.

[Steve_Seattle]

If the facts are as he has presented them, this is an outrage. These IRS criminals must be arrested and punished. If I said what I REALLY think should be done to them, I’d probably have the FBI at my door.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

[Texas Fossil]

I am very surprised to see this in the Washington Times.

Did it say the business owner was in Michigan?

[DCBryan1]

"I don't care"

Neither do I. Bang!

[MrB]

Henry Bowman, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[Daveinyork]

Who regulates the regulators?

[KarlInOhio]

The whole concept of civil forfeiture should be eliminated. The proper procedure if the government believes that the money is the result of a crime is a criminal prosecution along with all of the protection of rights and requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Most often civil forfeiture can be summed up as "You have some money. Hand it over."

[The Duke]

There is one and only one response to this. That response is to harden yourself physically. I don't care how old you are or what your medical conditions are, you'd better start getting "tough as nails".

I don't know exactly what is coming down the pike, but I do know that it's going to require physical, mental and spiritual toughness.

Personally I've worked my way down to about 900 calories of food intake a day now, and gotten rid of all diet sodas and other garbage out of my diet. I'm either going to get tough of die trying. (And, yes, I know that I'll have to increase the calories one of these days .. but today is not that day).

[Domandred]

Reading the article the IRS could seize pretty much ANY retail small business’s accounts under suspicion of avoiding reporting. ALL of them I know make small, less than $10,000 deposits daily, some multiple times a day. Heck doesn’t even have to be small business.

I guarantee McDonald’s and pretty much all other corporate chain fast food makes multiple small cash deposits daily. IRS could seize McDonald’s using this tactic.

Absolute rogue agency

[GraceG]

Time to start going “Cash Only” wait businesses cannot do that as having “too much cash” can be seen as a FEDERAL violation of DRUG LAWS....

They have really got the law abiding OVER A BARREL don’t they?

Meanwhile criminals in DC and outside of DC are getting sweetheart deals and amnesty....

[Cicero]

There probably isn’t a newspaper in Michigan that would print this story. The Washington Times remains one of the few who are willing to cross the liberal establishment.

I believe what he says. If were a shopkeeper with a bank across the street, I’d bring most of the cash over every day, and perhaps several times a day. Especially in Michigan, where the criminals run loose. And as he says, if he is robbed of more than $10,000, his insurance doesn’t cover it.

[VRW Conspirator]

1) The IRS is first and foremost a collection agency.

2) The is a collar around the IRS and there is a chain fixed to that collar. The other end of that chain is at the feet of the US Congress.

[GraceG]

And this is different from Fascism how?

The next time a Liberal says that requiring Voter ID as “Papers Please” in a German accent I am going to F&*^*%ing PUKE right on their shoes.

We already have a “Papers Please” situation when it comes to LAW ABIDING CITIZENS being harassed by government officials...

[high info voter]

You can thank congress. In 1913 they sold out your a&& and everyone else’s a&& to a foreign banking cartel called the federal reserve. They’ve owned you, me, and the government ever sinse.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It would be nice to know the outcome of this as to what the IRS’s reasons were.

If you make numerous cash deposits under $10,000.00 they decide that the reason you are doing it that way is to prevent the IRS from being notified that you are making cash deposits.

In other words they "divine" that you must be doing it with ill intent.

However if you are a busy small business which takes in a lot of cash you usually are doing these deposits so you don t get robbed. It is a sensible thing to do.

When I worked in a gas station one of the things you did when you closed out your register was hand the cash to the manager who took it promptly to the bank.

While we were occasionally robbed by the small time guys, who got a few hundred dollars, the big guys, who blew safes and got away with tens of thousands of dollars did not bother us. It was not worth their time.