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IRS severs ties with ACORN over scandal

Grim17

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Looks like another shoe has dropped in the ACORN mess... This time, it will also hurt the 3 million people that received free tax advice from the IRS through ACORN.

I just hope the IRS finds other affiliates they can partner up with before tax time next year.

IRS severs ties with ACORN over scandal
Sep 23 03:48 PM US/Eastern
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The IRS says it is severing ties with ACORN, the community activist group involved in a scandal after employees were caught on video giving advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp.

The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program. The program offered free tax advice to about 3 million low- and moderate-income tax filers this spring.

The IRS said ACORN, which is short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, provided help on about 25,000 returns.

The House and Senate voted earlier this month to sever federal funding to ACORN. And the Census Bureau severed its ties with the group for the 2010 national head-count.

Link
 
hmm

Hmmm so under bush 43 acorn was giving tax advice.
 
It's sad that the right is winning on this one. The few things that have happened have been isolated to a random number of people within the organization. It has been the fault of a select few and those people should be prosecuted. To penalize the whole organization is sad.
 
It's sad that the right is winning on this one. The few things that have happened have been isolated to a random number of people within the organization. It has been the fault of a select few and those people should be prosecuted. To penalize the whole organization is sad.

Well at least under Obama this corruption is getting cleaned up.
 
It's sad that the right is winning on this one. The few things that have happened have been isolated to a random number of people within the organization. It has been the fault of a select few and those people should be prosecuted. To penalize the whole organization is sad.
I totally agree!

Why penalize the whole organization for hiring people people that support child prostitution, spousal homicide, tax evasion, etc. etc.

/SAR-CHASM
 
I would like to give ACORN the benefit of the doubt here, but I work with too many not for profits who rely on gov't funds to pay for the bulk of their budgets and they often go down this route. That's what happens, organizations are basically guaranteed money so their drive to be the best diminishes and they in turn start to hire sub par employees. Hell, sub par would be an upgrade compared to some of the people who are hired and kept on for decades.

I fully support their funds being cut.
 
It's sad that the right is winning on this one.

Was your sadness a partisan thing, where you don't like it when the bad guys (republicans) come out on top?
or
Are you sad because the good guys (democrats) didn't come out on top?
or
Are you saddened because you feel ACORN is getting the shaft?


I'm just curious what exactly prompted that statement.



The few things that have happened have been isolated to a random number of people within the organization. It has been the fault of a select few and those people should be prosecuted. To penalize the whole organization is sad.

One office facilitating every single one of those things, wouldn't have been that big a scandal. Even with two of them, it likely would have blown over... But when you have this kind of blatant facilitating of illegal activities from workers in 4 offices (5 if you include San Diego), without one person objecting to any one of the illegal enterprises they were asked to assist in, (including smuggling children into the country for child prostitution) it displays a disturbing organizational pattern that can't be overlooked.

Keep in mind, that ACORN has been shrouded in controversy for the last 6 years, long before these tapes were ever made, which played a major part in many of these government agencies dropping the hammer on them. They've been charged dozens of times for crimes related to voter registration fraud in 14 different states, with more than 30 workers having been convicted. Then there's the million dollars embezzled from them, that ACORN chose to cover up, rather than report.

They receive 10's of millions of dollars in government funding, and with that a certain level of of standards have to be met. With all their problems and controversy over the years, I think they were lucky that they received funding as long as they did.

And by the way... You may feel that the right is winning here, but I see the American people as the real winner.
.
 
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I fully support their funds being cut.

As I understand it, VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) doesn't involve any money. While the IRS does send test packets and training supplies, you don't get money for being part of VITA, or at least when my program (a joint law school-Accounting Majors) did it, we got no funds. After all, it is volunteer.

And considering who VITA helps (or is suppose to help, don't get me started on some of the wankers who tried to get us to do their taxes for free), the vast majority of these people can do it themselves. Most of them are just fill in your W-2, any dependents and withholding and you're pretty much done. 10 minutes of work.

Considering how many universities participate in this, ACORN being cut won't hurt much of anyone.
 
It's sad that the right is winning on this one. The few things that have happened have been isolated to a random number of people within the organization. It has been the fault of a select few and those people should be prosecuted. To penalize the whole organization is sad.

You think that's sad? Now, the dumbasses at ACORN are sueing O'Keefe, Breitbart and Giles. Is that stupid, or what?
 
As I understand it, VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) doesn't involve any money. While the IRS does send test packets and training supplies, you don't get money for being part of VITA, or at least when my program (a joint law school-Accounting Majors) did it, we got no funds. After all, it is volunteer.

And considering who VITA helps (or is suppose to help, don't get me started on some of the wankers who tried to get us to do their taxes for free), the vast majority of these people can do it themselves. Most of them are just fill in your W-2, any dependents and withholding and you're pretty much done. 10 minutes of work.

Considering how many universities participate in this, ACORN being cut won't hurt much of anyone.

I bet that VITA participents aren't allowed to give accounting advice to people who want to run illegal operations. Just a hunch.
 
I bet that VITA participents aren't allowed to give accounting advice to people who want to run illegal operations. Just a hunch.

If you're running an illegal operation, you don't report it. Or you're an idiot. What kind of idiot puts their SS # on a tax filing reporting illegally derived income?

And it's not even tax advice. Most people using VITA don't even make enough to bother even basic tax planning.
 
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Well at least under Obama this corruption is getting cleaned up.

Yeah. :roll: Which I'm certain would have happened if these videos hadn't surfaced.
 
If you're running an illegal operation, you don't report it. Or you're an idiot. What kind of idiot puts their SS # on a tax filing reporting illegally derived income?

And it's not even tax advice. Most people using VITA don't even make enough to bother even basic tax planning.

Then, why is it called the, "Volunteer Income Tax Assistance"
 
Then, why is it called the, "Volunteer Income Tax Assistance"

Preparing tax returns and giving tax advice are not the same thing. Filling out a 1040's various fields and pressing compute is hardly the same as saying "if you pick this deduction rather than that one, you could save X."
 
Preparing tax returns and giving tax advice are not the same thing. Filling out a 1040's various fields and pressing compute is hardly the same as saying "if you pick this deduction rather than that one, you could save X."

So, "tax assisstance", and, "tax advice", are different? You don't really mean that, do you?:rofl
 
So, "tax assistance", and, "tax advice", are different? You don't really mean that, do you?:rofl

Yes I do.

Assistance is helping someone fill out a form they do not understand.

Advice is helping them plan to reduce their total taxes via various (hopefully legal, BAD KPMG!) methods.

Explain to me how filling in blank fields is the same as structuring a transaction to defer recognition of income into a period of low marginal taxation?

Or you could just stop talking out of your rear as you normally do. And I know you're going to fail to answer my question.
 
Yes I do.

Assistance is helping someone fill out a form they do not understand.

Advice is helping them plan to reduce their total taxes via various (hopefully legal, BAD KPMG!) methods.

Explain to me how filling in blank fields is the same as structuring a transaction to defer recognition of income into a period of low marginal taxation?

Or you could just stop talking out of your rear as you normally do. And I know you're going to fail to answer my question.

It's not I that's talking out of my rear, sweety. Maybe you could stop drifting threads totally off topic for no apparent reason.
 
Against his will, of course.

I believe they call this: "throwing [insert politically damning affiliation here] under the bus."

You start working on that video game yet? (I don't remember if you had alotted ACORN a point value yet) :lol:
 
And I know you're going to fail to answer my question.

Huh. Imagine that. I ask Apdst to put up or shutup predicting that he will utterly fail....and what does he do?

Fail with Flying Colors. You sir, are the True King of Epic Fail.

You make fun of me for a statement and when I ask you to prove how my defense is wrong....you turn your tail and throw insults at me.
 
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Huh. Imagine that. I ask Apdst to put up or shutup predicting that he will utterly fail....and what does he do?

Fail with Flying Colors. You sir, are the True King of Epic Fail.

I'm not the one claiming that, "assistance", and, "advice", are completely different things.

Are we supposed to believe that when filling out a 1040, and a client asks a question about a deduction, that the VITA person isn't going to say anything? Of course we're not supposed to believe that.
 
I'm not the one claiming that, "assistance", and, "advice", are completely different things.

You just laughed at me and called me wrong. And when I backed up my statement what do you do?

Refuse to address how I am completely correct. Typical. Make snide remarks and then you have nothing to fall back on.

Are we supposed to believe that when filling out a 1040, and a client asks a question about a deduction, that the VITA person isn't going to say anything? Of course we're not supposed to believe that.

Explaining what a deduction is, is not tax advice. If I explain what force is in physics class, is that advice? And a VITA person will ask the person the necessary questions to determine the number of deductions.

Explain to me how filling in blank fields is the same as structuring a transaction to defer recognition of income into a period of low marginal taxation?

or shutup.
 
You just laughed at me and called me wrong. And when I backed up my statement what do you do?

Refuse to address how I am completely correct. Typical. Make snide remarks and then you have nothing to fall back on.



Explaining what a deduction is, is not tax advice. If I explain what force is in physics class, is that advice? And a VITA person will ask the person the necessary questions to determine the number of deductions.

Explain to me how filling in blank fields is the same as structuring a transaction to defer recognition of income into a period of low marginal taxation?

or shutup.


You didn't provide anything to support your statement, unless your word is supposed to be considered supporting documentation and I'm quite sure that we're not going to buy into that. Are we?
 
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