IRS (back taxes) cellphone rule called outmoded

[flashl]

Employers must pay back taxes if workers fail to keep detailed usage logs. Some see a disconnect between law and life.

By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Small, cheap cellphones have become ubiquitous in the workplace. But federal tax rules governing them date to the days of big handsets, big bills and big hair.

Major employers, including the University of California system, have been hit with bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes for violating the anachronistic laws. If the rules aren't changed, many employers say they will stop handing out cellphones to their workers.

The problem stems from the tax code's inability to keep up with technological advances.

..

The law requires employees to keep detailed records of all calls made on their work-issue cellphones, indicating whether they were business or personal. If they don't, the phone and wireless service are deemed a perk that must be listed as taxable income to the employee.

Most employers were unaware of the rules until the last few years, when the IRS began cracking down and requiring additional taxes to cover the value of the cellphone service provided to employees.

[2Design]

1. must enforce or our current stable of wh war criminals will abuse further

yes it is too bad it get others - but not everything works well when free to government employees - they cheat

[flashl]

2. AFAIC, its not about enforcement. Its an indicator where the government is looking for 'fast' money.

Complaints have circulated for years about 'selective' enforcement. Here's an example:

Agents Say Fast Audits Hurt I.R.S

New York Times

Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees who say that the policy is costing the government billions of dollars a year.

“It’s catch and release,” said Douglas R. Johnson, an I.R.S. auditor in Colorado for three decades who said he grew so frustrated at how large corporations were allowed to pay far less than what he thought they owed that he transferred to the agency’s small-business division.

[Truth4Justice]

3. My employer wont give me a free tracking device aka a "tether" ? Please say its true !

I never thought I would want to kiss an IRS agent.

Keep that law on the books !!!