IRS formally makes tax reporting meaningless

In the thick of the IRS reporting madness, the IRS has formally made a statement with regard to the new IRS reporting rules.

In a letter to the National Federation of Independent Business, the IRS said Wednesday it would not require retailers and others to explain how and why their business income differs from their credit-card receipts, which Congress now is requiring card companies to report separately to the IRS.

“There will be no reconciliation required” for the 2012 tax year, “nor do we intend to require reconciliation in future years,” said a letter to NFIB from IRS Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller.

Processors have spend millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours trying to meticulously match business information with what the IRS has on file. I’ve strongly opposed the bill since it was first written about 5 years ago. This is an example of a bill that should never have been passed in the first place. It wouldn’t have worked except in all but the most egregious cases of tax evasion and caused an inconceivable burden to processors and normal businesses in the US.

The IRS and US government should issue a formal apology for causing countless time and money to be wasted for just about every US business. My only hope is that this is the first step in completely retracting it.