Apparently, it’s pretty simple and low-risk to file fraudulent tax returns
claiming that you qualify for thousands of dollars in refunds. The
IRS will
cut you a check, then maaaaaybe somewhere down the road they’ll
notice something fishy, then maaaaaaybe they’ll catch you, then
maaaaaaaaybe they’ll try to get the money back.
No fooling.
Here’s a
story about one of the ones they caught up with. He took in half a million
dollars over three years this way — and all he had to do was just to pull the
numbers out of his butt. Nothing fancy. It was only accidentally, “after
federal agents learned that Fisher had cheated a local car dealer out of $1.2
million and used that money to buy gold bars and silver coins,” that the tax
fraud was uncovered incidentally to that investigation.
A recent TIGTA audit found out that this sort of fraud is
a billion-dollar problem for the
IRS.
“This problem is becoming unmanageable,” the audit said.
The agency issued an estimated $1 billion in potentially fraudulent refunds,
four times what it originally estimated, and then didn’t bother to further
investigate half a million of the returns with discrepancies. Their Criminal
Investigation division tracked down about $189 million of that billion,
but left $894 million on
the table.
From time to time I’ve read what I thought of as sort of interesting thought
experiments about how massively-multiplayer video game universes have started
to develop impressively large economies, with measurable exchange rates with
the real world, and about whether real-world governments would eventually try
to dip their taxing fingers into this revenue stream.
Turns out it was less of a sci-fi thought experiment than I thought. The
governments of
Australia and
China are already implementing virtual currency taxation schemes.
It’s a strange new world. Did you ever think when you were playing “Monopoly”
as a kid that one day it would come to this?
This looks like it could be a useful part of the solidarity economy:
TeachMate
TeachMate.org is a service that helps people who
wish to learn things find others who wish to teach them. You may think of it
as of a dating service in education. We are also very fond of the idea of
teaching for teaching: you can find people who’d love to teach you
something in return for you teaching him another thing.
The essence of this service is simple: whoever teaches — learns. There are
few simple things we wish our user could find out:
- You don’t need to be a professional to teach. Instead, you have to teach
to become a professional.
- You don’t need to pay money for learning or ask for money when you teach
someone.
- Learning is not about the degrees, it’s about the process and what you
can do with your knowledge.
