Irony Alert! Please put on your Irony Goggles.
I don't have to tell you that audits suck. Just ask the IRS.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office inspected the tax agency's financial statements from the 2009 fiscal year with the exacting thoroughness of, well, of an IRS auditor, and found a few billion-dollar errors.
According to the report (PDF), the IRS made a variety of accounting errors last year that "could adversely affect the reliability of its financial statements" and result in "duplicate or erroneous refunds." Among the mistakes were a "failure to record the receipt of a taxpayer’s $3 million payment" and an $8 billion discrepancy between two accounting systems tracking how much money taxpayers owe. The audit also found a $5.1 billion "unexplained variance" between the total amount the agency took in last year and the amount its detailed tax files said it took in.
receipts in a shoebox?
So, does the IRS have to produce receipts, get a tax attorney and pay a penalty? Can we knock on their door and do personal interviews now?
Assuredly the people who want to eliminate the IRS and claim one does not have to pay their taxes by constitutional degree and so on are going to eat this one up!