Can You Lose Your Job if You Complain About the IRS?

IRS Building

Photo by Adam Fagen at Flickr.com

It appears that complaining about the IRS cost news anchorman Larry Connors his job this week.  It’s kind of sad; Mr. Connors has been a local media celebrity for 37 years.  First, for the full disclosure; Larry Connors is not a client of mine.  If he were, I wouldn’t be allowed to discuss his case due to confidentiality laws.  Since I don’t represent Mr. Connors (I‘ve never even met him), clearly there are things I don’t know about his case.  That said, as an enrolled agent, I do IRS representation and I have experience with how the IRS handles these issues.

 

The whole thing boils down to a post Larry Connors made on his Facebook page.  The page has been removed, but here’s the quote that he posted on May 13th:

 

“I don’t accept ‘conspiracy theories,’ but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me. … Can I prove it? At this time, no. But it is a fact that since that April 2012 interview … the IRS has been pressuring me.”

 

The interview he’s talking about is one where Mr. Connors interviewed President Obama and asked him a rather pointed question about Mr. Obama’s vacations in light of the current economic crisis.  Here is a link to that interview if you would like to see it.  It’s only a minute 18 seconds long:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CookYzmUZk

 

The other important piece of information is that Larry Connors’ tax issues actually date back to 2008 and that he was paying his back taxes on a monthly installment agreement since the summer of 2011.   Mr. Connors did not mention this fact in his Facebook post.

 

So those are the facts as presented by the press.  Here’s what I think—

 

My best guess is that Mr. Connors made one of his monthly installment payments late.  I’ve seen this happen to my own clients; you only have to be late on one payment by only one day and the IRS has the right to cancel your installment agreement – and they will.  And they can be really nasty about it.   Really nasty.  My clients often say they feel like they’re being persecuted.

 

So, here you have Mr. Connors doing an interview with the president that he’s been told went too far.  Shortly after the interview he receives IRS nasty-grams and eventually has a lien slapped on his home.  (Note that he’s been paying his installment agreement the whole time here, it’s possible that at the time he is unaware that there was a late payment.)    Then he sees the news story about certain groups being targeted by the IRS for political reasons.  Is it unreasonable for him to think that he might have been a political target?  I don’t think so.

 

The day the main IRS story broke, one of my not for profit clients called and said, “Did you see the news?  That’s what happened to us!”  Her group was required to jump through hoops and wait for months to obtain their status while other non-profit groups leap-frogged right past them without a hitch.  (I know, I was the one doing the paperwork.)  I confess, before I learned more about the actual groups involved, I sort of thought my client might have been one of the targeted agencies although I now know they weren’t in that group.

 

Now Larry Connors is out of a job because his employer claims he has a bias against the IRS.  Dear KMOV, I have a news flash for you:   Everybody has a bias against the IRS!   But that said, Mr. Connors is a respected 37-year veteran journalist.  His Facebook post was an opinion, not a news story.  If he had found proof that the IRS really was pressuring him because of the interview—what would have been the lead news story at six o’clock!  Clearly he knows the difference between news and opinion.

 

Here’s my opinion:  A 37-year veteran costs a whole lot more in payroll than someone younger with less experience.  And a 66 year old anchorman doesn’t look as pretty in HD as some of the sweet young reporters do.  I think KMOV is using the Mr. Connors’ IRS Facebook post as an excuse to break his employment contract and reduce their operating costs.  I think that’s the real story, but I don’t expect you to hear that on the KMOV news.

 

Since his dismissal, Mr. Connors and his attorneys have filed a lawsuit.  Good luck, Larry!

What’s the Fiscal Cliff?

Cliffs of Moher 3

Photo by mith_y on Flickr.com

I was watching my Sunday morning news program and some talking head said the term “fiscal cliff” 10 times before I quit counting and started on the crossword puzzle instead.  I really wasn’t going to write about it—I figure that plenty of more important people are talking about it and certainly plenty of better writers are explaining it.  ­­­­

 

But my son talked me into it.  Not with, “Oh Mom, it will make so much more sense if you explain it,” of course not.  He said, “Yeah, Fiscal Cliff sounds like a Highlights series.  You know, Fiscal Cliff saves all his receipts for his taxes and, Irresponsible Andy writes bad checks.”

 

While I realize that everybody knows that Fiscal Cliff is not a real cartoon character (well almost everybody anyway) I guess I should spell it out just to make sure you know what’s going on.

 

The fiscal cliff is like a one two punch to the American economy that basically involves tax hikes and government spending cuts that are going to happen if Congress and the President don’t get off their doofusses and come up with a better plan.

 

First the taxes, this is what will happen starting January 1:

  1. Bush tax cuts expire and taxes will go up for most Americans
  2. The temporary 2% payroll tax cut expires
  3. The AMT patch is not extended

These tax issues are expected to make everybody’s taxes go up from between $2,000 to $3,000 a year.

 

Next, we have the immediate reduction in government spending that hits on January.  Some of the budget cuts include, but are not limited to:

  1. a $55 billion reduction to the Pentagon’s budget
  2. a reduction of payments to physicians participating in Medicare
  3. substantial cuts to FEMA
  4. and substantial cuts to the Department of Education

The combination of tax increases and government spending cuts are expected to take $800 billion out of the U.S. economy.  That could be devastating to us.

 

So—what’s next?  You tell me and we’ll both know.  It’s not like Congress and the President didn’t know it was coming.  These issues have been in the works for quite some time.  The idea of punting until after the election seems to be standard operating procedure for our elected officials.   Now that the election is over, they don’t have a lot of time to fix this mess.

 

I don’t know what the right solution is, but I do know that this is what’s going to be the headlines for the next few weeks.