The media deception is worse than that. Not only did they decide today that the taxes were due they decided today that per diem payments would be taxed at all. If I read it correctly.
you are correct, its sad isn’t it.
Concerning receipts, she has her State of Alaska Credit Card ~ (She's the Governor so you know she has one) ~ and that generates a stream of "state records" which IRS is bound to respect.
Along the way to this conclusion I recall a discussion regarding potential taxability of USPS per diem (where your expenses might be less than what you got paid) and it was determined that IRS would accept agency records ~ and that would consist of a copy of your own travel voucher. At the time we'd just started working with a travel system that electronically tracked your plane tickets, etc. so that you never really got receipts for them, and they were moving to electronic tracking for hotel bills, etc. ~ so you'd get no receipts there either.
The consequence was that the government (manifest in its disguise as USPS) was generating it's own record stream that would be available to IRS if questions arose.
So why would we even keep a copy of our own vouchers? Self defense would be the only reason. Frankly, I never expect to see an IRS agent so screw the old records.