Talk:Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998

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[edit] Article needs some support

In my opinion this article in present form really needs work. Much of the verbiage consists of unsourced statements about the inner workings of the Internal Revenue Service -- statements characterized by the anonymous editor who inserted them as "rather obvious historical events."

"Obvious" means "easy to see or understand; plain; evident". "Evident" means "easy to see or perceive" or "clear" or "apparent" (all definitions from Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Ed. 1976).

That George Washington served as the first President of the United States would at least arguably be an example of an "obvious" historical event (and then only to persons familiar with American history).

The statements in this article -- on the other hand -- may be correct or they may be incorrect, or they may be partly correct and partly incorrect, but in my opinion this kind of detail comes nowhere close to being equivalent to a description of "obvious" historical events, especially for purposes of an encyclopedia article. The statements should be either sourced or removed. I am in the process of looking for sources for this material. Yours, Famspear 22:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, this is the verbiage to which I am referring:

In the hearings, auditors of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) testified that their managers used quotas (Quotas are rife throughout the IRS, being thought necessary, to keep non-work motivated people working hard). The auditors testified that when they did not "produce" a certain number of taxpayers cheating/per day, every day, the auditors were given low ratings on their yearly reviews. Ratings are from 1-5, 5 being the best. IRS workers not getting a 4 or 5 cannot obtain better positions or go into management, because yearly ratings are given so much weight in job competition that, as a practical matter, only 4s or 5s can move up. 3 rateds ("average") are rarely able to move past the first job they were hired into, no matter their competency or training. Year end bonus monies are only given to 4 & 5 rateds. Moreover, employees rated 1 or 2 are "counseled" by their managers, including being fired if they continue being 1 or 2.

The auditors' response was to "game" the system to meet their quotas, arbitrarily assessing additional taxes to honest taxpayers who did not actually owe anything. Congress responded with a Code of Conduct for the IRS. For auditors and the Criminal Investigation division, quotas were abolished (managers in these two sections must sign yearly statements certifying that they are not, by overt or implicit or any other means, imposing quotas on their analysts. Quotas were, however, retained in many other tax pipeline divisions.

Again, assuming that all this information is correct, it should be properly sourced. Yours, Famspear 22:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, in reply: I notice you wish almost every sentence to be a quote from somewheres else. That isnt bad, I suppose, although someone does have to say it the first time for any words to exist. so, why not I? But consider: those of us who work in the real world know that every business in the world has a quota, or production schedule. This much work has to be complete in this much time. And, the whole basis for the hiring of work inspectors, is the tendency of bosses to cheat, to order the slaves to take shortcuts, to shorten the time it takes to do a job, or to do it with less cost, shoddy materials or shoddy work, or ANYTHING other than how the job is supposed to be done. And, this is and always will be a shortcoming of bosses, because employees never have this problem (ok, some do) because as long as they are paid, they will do whatever, or nothing (i am simplifying to make this shorter). Therefore, that fact that the IRS has quotas is very obvious. the bosses there get bonuses for meeting quota, like any boss anywhere. I thot this was a universal business reality. Not where you work, eh? Feel very very lucky. Ditto for the rating system, because crap rolls downhill; meaning, the boss' quota becomes the slaves quota. Bosses and slaves everywhere do not get points for questioning the system, points are given for giving the system what it wants. this is quite obvious to anyone who has worked in the real world. the standard procedure of quality inspection all over the world is always the same: inspectors HAVE to be insulated from production bosses, because those bosses always and will always try to cheat, bully, lie, fire honest whistleblowers, etc. In the IRS there is no insulation, therefore there is no competent inspection, therefore it is almost a given that the bosses there are cheating, lying, forcing stupid things to be done in the name of quota, etc. The next obvious thing is the senate hearings. What do you suppose the senate does in any hearings ever held in the history of the US? Are they ever held to congratulate govt servants for being so honest and wonderful? well, no. It is quite obvious from what came from those 1996-97 hearings, that congress got an earful of wrongdoing in the IRS. Look at just two results from those hearings: 1. The taxpayer advocate office. Insulated from the bosses and managers of the rest of the IRS, their job is (among other things, like representing the taxpayers being attacked by the IRS managers)to make twice yearly reports to congress on the biggest, baddest tax problems of the year. which this year the champeen bad problem is, the criminal investigation division. Taxpayer advocate every year was seeing exponential increases in taxpayers coming over the wall at them, wondering what the heck was happening to their refunds that never came, and since CI has a policy of no contacting the taxpayers they are investigating, the taxpayers could get nothing but lies in response. In 2005 taxpayer advocate had over 20,000 people asking them for help (this is from the jan. report to congress). Have you ever heard of the iceberg theory? It goes like this: If you see one problem, it means there are 20 that you dont know about, hidden by the bosses. because, again, bosses are the ones in any business that do the systemic cheating; slaves only hide the stuff they themselves screw up on. 2. The IRS code of conduct. One of the items in the code is that noone will by action or inaction cheat a taxpayer. In other words, the IRS had to be told that knowingly cheating a taxpayer is illegal. Wouldnt you say this is almost an insult to honest IRS people? being told that now, you will no longer be able to cheat the taxpayers, because congress passed a law making it so? And wouldnt this law be the result of congress believing that the IRS was cheating taxpayers, and they believed it because whistleblowers came out of the woodwork of the audit division and were willing to testify that their bosses were forcing them to cheat? How many auditors would you bet came forward and said, I cheat taxpayers because I just love to steal money from those slobby taxpayers. how many auditors do you really feel are so rotten and rabid that they would knowingly cheat people they dont even know? again, it is obvious that the IRS bosses set up a systemic cheat. if you object on the grounds that surely, even bosses have some intelligence and decency, and would never do this; well, the question would then be, if not the bosses, then exactly who was ordering the quotas that caused the cheating, that caused the senate hearings, that caused the auditor testimony, that caused the reform act, etc.? I could go on; and on. Now, you want sources, this guy says this, they said that in this document. it is true I am new to Wikopedia, and rather than spill my guts completely, I am actually taking this slowly. Of course, not being paid, i work when i have time and inclination. Retirement is a lie, you see. I am thrilled that wiki is allowing anyone to contribute info; this eliminates the ivory tower crap, where only people with doctorates get to expound their bile. Bottom line is, it allows the people who actually know what is going on to simply say it. Yes, it also opens the door to the crazys to write anything they want, stupid things, lying and/or idiotic. So what is the correct balance? do I really need to spend hours running down documents proving everything I say, and if I dont have them I should shut up, and so let this information that wont be available anywhere else in the entire world, because at least some of it is in internal documents that rarely gets into any public forum, not ever be published, or known? at least this way, there will exist at least a rumor about why IRS matters are the way they are, and it gives a rare view into one of the US most feared and irritating bureaus, unloved and unwanted, and yet so vital in getting the dough the gov needs to run. You might think of all this as a newspaper article; they always have unnamed sources, because if they named them pretty soon they would not have them. The founding fathers wanted it this way, knowing quite well (so obvious to them) that inevitably the ugly and stupid and corrupt boss phenomena would come to our shores. and in fact,that is what the Declaration Of Independence is, a revolt against the hideous bosses of their day; I notice not once do they document where they got their information. I suspect they felt it was obvious to all that everything in there was true. 67.42.127.241 08:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear anonymous user at IP 67.42.127.241: Thank you for sharing your feelings with us. You may want to consider reviewing the following information:

Wikipedia: Verifiability

Wikipedia: Citing sources

Wikipedia: No original research

Wikipedia: Neutral point of view

Wikipedia: Contributing to Wikipedia

Yours, Famspear 13:34, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

oh damn. ok, i give. fun, you (us? you have worms?)are not. hopefully NOR revisions and sources will arrive shortly. Darlon 04:36, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• I placed the unreferenced template at the top of the article. Based on the conversations above it might be appropriate to delete this article if references are not provided. This article also needs wikification.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeepday (talk • contribs) . on 12 November 2006.

I went ahead and deleted the unsourced material. The verbiage had been in the article since June 2006 and despite its lack of sourcing having been pointed out, had not been supplemented with any kind of backup.

I also added some brief examples of the provisions of the Act from a secondary source. This is an extensive Act -- so the inclusion of the items I listed should in no way be construed as a determination that these particular items are more important than some other items I did not list. This is definitely a work in progress. Yours, Famspear 21:19, 12 November 2006 (UTC)