The IRS Says,

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com

Editor’s Note: For our international readers, the IRS is the Internal Revenue Service. They collect taxes on a national level from both companies and individuals. Feared by many, coincidentally a story of this nature appears every year just before the tax filing deadline. However, the message of the story is worth noting.

We could pose the question much like Dwight Yoakum had in Sling Blade: So, exactly how retarded are you? But that wouldn’t be fair: One ought to never confuse ignorance with stupidity.

Still, it does beg the question given that Facebook’s vast annual revenue is based on the sale of data and images that its “members” voluntarily post. (I thought everybody knew this.) This willingness to divulge pictures and information, which one ought to consider private, is at the heart of the IRS’s new computerized platform, a cross-referencing system that crawls through Facebook comparing lifestyle entries with filed tax information.

US News and World Report recently published an in-depth analysis of this new IRS process utilizing comparative data and analysis of social media, including specifically Facebook, to better analyze tax returns for audit potential. Rather than grab pieces of the article, read the entire report here. Then, as my dad used to say, Wise-up, kid!