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tv   [untitled]    April 17, 2012 1:30am-2:00am EDT

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tax advocate back in march 2001. she serves as an advocate and leads the taxpayer advocate service to about 2,000 taxpayer advocates. she also helped americans resolve their tax problems and worked with txe irs to protect procedural in the doed. she practiced private tax law and owned and operated accounting tax and information sfz, planning prep service. in jackson, ohio, michael, a republican. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> hi. >> caller: i have two questions. i just heard a case on the radio where the irs was taking an individual to court and was essentially trying to seize his property in tax court. he took them to federal court and won a judgment roughly six years ago which said for anyone,
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including the government or even the irs to see somebody's property, they actually had to go to court, to tax court. my second question involved something i've always wondered abo about, i had heard many moons ago, that the statement that you see on tax forms says that if you don't pay your taxes, the irs has the authority to garnish your wages, but i found on the internet someplace, that's like paragraph a. paragraph b says, but the federal government can only do that i you are a federal employee. so that's my question. thank you. >> the first question, actually, congress made it clear that in order for the irs to actually do a seizure of, i would say, tangible property, real property, other than a levy, that they did have to go to federal district court. there is an administrative
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foreclosure and seizure process, a foreclosure process, and there is an administrative seizure process. however, the united states tax court has jurisdiction over cases called collection due process cases. this was a provision that came in in 1998 which said, before the irs can levy upon property, whether it's your bank account or your wages, the first time it's trying to do it with respect to any tax. the taxpayer had to be given a hearing. the opportunity to ask for a hearing before an appeals officer. if you didn't like the results of that hearing where you got to present alternatives to that particular collection action, you coulgo to the united states tracks court. so the united states tax court over. as far as levying, the irs h
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has -- if outside out nitd states, must go to a court and get a judgment before it levees on the bank accounts or seizes stock or any of those things. the irs can go ahead under its statutory administrative levy authority without a judgment and take action as long as you've bep noticed, notified that the tax has been assessed and that a demand has been made for payment. and that is the statutory framework. again, after you've gotten that notice and demand, the first time the irs wants to levy on your account, you get the right to have a collection due process hearing in which you can raise alternatives to that collection. if you like the results at the administrative hearing, you can go to the united states tax cot. >> jim asks to twitter, what's the advertising budget for your
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department? >> it's about 200 some odd million, close to 300 million employees. i've got 2,000 employees throughout the united states. i have 75 offices. congress required us to have one herself, they're states like texas, caora, nork -- wealave"morehan ono"ofce in whosstates s acan be around thde pune. >> based on your exuere, how mucibof the resnce to t simplifion is the consequence of a largm granted, might have fewer employees. >> i think that is a complete miss son sepgs of who makes the laws. i have people saying, "the irs code." do you really think the irs would write a code like this.
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it's very difficult to administer. irs administers it. the president proposes laws, but the isn is way down there in terms of the tote many positivel positively. >> reporter: one of the thirgs things i oof with was the subject of i a child. before you even got, poum depend do you have, are you entitled to child care credit. one of my utilization form of a child. even something as simple as that, that everybody made perfect sense. it took nearly to crede back in.
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vivian shares your desire for clarity and writes in saying, the irs does not write the tax point. good coke. >> i just had a couple comments. i think a lot of the anks that people have in going to the irs is because they're not prepared for what -- if you go to the same repair year after year and you have a history, instead of having bubld. my husband and i went through an audit. i knew my. -- she actually has been any taxpayer for ten years. she knows my history. and met with ms. yolanda murray.
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she was amazing. i found that every party i dealt with in that office, it made. i produced the backup early. and it won't are prepared and go into it as if the iht. awant.you.to pay what the law is and if we do our due diligencon there, wll b fine. >> the christian science monitor reports 110 million, over 25,000. she described an office exam, and in fact, there are very few office exams where you go into the irs office or the irs comes out and talk to you. the 78% of all individual
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audits, every ar, are done by correspondence. so the situation that she described is actually a really great situation because you're actually sudden with your documents and you're able to have a give and take and go back and forth. in these correspondence exams, there are no person. you get these cryptic letters back -- the first letter. these were surveys of. when they got their audit letter in these correspond not ex exams, they did not know they were under audit. >> fering at your. they didn't know what they needed to provide, and they had
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to provide by mail. the irs rarely acknowledges that they got your mail, and often the next notice is that, we disagree with you and here you have to go to kax tort if you want to breast. we're testing something right now and i'm really pushing it right now which is, to the caller's point, to get like a virtually. they can schedule an opinion. but they can have this so they're not shuttled from one person to another person to another pen. >> i would i would also say that young person is responsible. like i said, individual audits are done that way. there is no one employee responsible for that case and no
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employee on that case. >> good morning. >> caller: yeah, hi, how are you? i'm calling because i'm an avid watcher and i've seen mrs. olson on a number of times. but i experienced a terrible reaction and had to go to my representative, and i was a constituent and she assisted me. i was assigned person in jacksonville, mr. jones, who really helped me and deserves k accolades for working with me and a taxpayer. i had called the tax office, i had gone down in person, and to get no assistance, so i finally thought i would call the national taxpayers' advocacy program. i didn't get any help, but thank goodness for my representative
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who was able to. >> i'm sorry about that. the phone line that we have on the screen is actually the number for my employees. the number that is listed of other materials are actually not my employees, they're employees of the irs that just answer the phones and are supposed to help solve problems before they come to us, if they can. so i'm glad that you ultimately got help. a lot of our cases do come from congressional offices. i can only say that we deal with about 300,000 cases a year, and we do have about a 75% relief rate. which means that about three out of every faw, so they better get ret leaf they're asking for when they came to our office. i'm glad that ultimatelt the good result. >> i'll read that line aloud for those listening on the radio.
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1-877-275-8271. it's the number for the irs advocate case line. phil, republican in em por pori kansas. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i don't really have any beef with the irs. what's the point? i'm just one of these around the country thatfeels they're just sort of resigned to their fate. the tax code itself, how on earth are we going to untangle it? it's 73,000 pages, and you just mentioned that 17 out of 17 tax preparers, 17 made significant errors. i would suspect if i had the irs do my taxes, probably you would get the samefigure. this thing is so tangled. i think if we try to untangle it, a couple things will happen,
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those lawyers who do tax stuff, they're going to descend to washington, d.c. to protect their interests. when the debt gets so high, i >>olson, tkof#of .itr ver you on the christian science monitor shows you helping a -- the problem at hand was an individual retired. even hard for you. >> yes, and i do tax returns for me and my family, tax returns for my family. we can take a lot of lessons from 1986 where we really did get major tax reform. but it took about six years of
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hard work and four years of intensive work. getting the plant shot down, going to the drawing board. about two years of really hard legislative work and it died several deaths. somebody said to me at one point, bill gale from brookings, said to me at one point, the tax reform that's going to happen that will really work, is something that every day looks at as impossible. so something that's going to happen is what we view as impossible today. my argument is, we just don't have any choice. we have to get comprehensive tax reform. and i do think that what's required is enormous political will and political will on the
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part of the administration and political will on the part of congress. and more importantly, and this is where i've sort of been trying to generate some support just for the context of health reform. political will on the part of taxpayers themselves on our web site, tax park taxpayers can put in their tax reform suggestions. i've asked them two questions. i have asked them to identify what tax benefit they receive that they would be willing up in the sbz -- asked them about what they think about the code. people tend to forget that the vast majority of the benefits, where the real numbers are, are in all the little provisions. they're not in the special interest provision thaz t go to oil and gas. they're in the special provisions that most of us
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benefit from. the mortgage deduction, the retirement income exclusioned, and if you look at all those things, that's where the money and, and that's where we need greater simplification. the congress won't have the political will. neither the administration. >> coming, tax mcged don. these are cost the government the most money for it now to be overwhelmingly popular. the. corporate tax rates are smaller but the biggest corporat tax breaks are often popular, too, like research and development.
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tim geithner talked about this issue on george stefanopolous. let's take a look at him. >> of course, we would sign today the milgd class to protect them today, protect them against any risk that the washington people can't took. of course, you could do that in an election year. they have to be to come together in the lame duck session before the end of the year, and i pus together a balanced to prevent that kind of damage to the economy. >> treasury secretary timothy geithner on this weet yesterday, talking about tax mcged don. >>, lei and the irs prepare for
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a tax code and we don't know how it's come out yet. >> i don't care, these provions occur with every single year. what event happened was that on december 27, congress passes a ivs when we're programming our computers and designing our forms. so we have to delay the filing fees and once they passed a bill in december in order to have the computers reprogrammed, and when that happens, we have seen in every gel filed dos kind of complexity and delay and i'll ur. dana, david, independent line.
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>> thank you in 2010, i transferred for my wife and i direct transfer to another institution irs money. about $38,000. all the paperwork was done, it was a $10,000 ir form. yes, they had all this information t i took this to arrest distributions and they want me to pay toxz on. it makes you wonder how they can. how does a station do this? hold on a second. >> david, we have to go. >> what's your last question? >> first i would need to see the 1099 and make sure the boxes were all correctly checked.
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they have a computer matching system, and i think maybe the boxes aren't checked or the bokz are checked and the irs still screws it up, and then, of course, the burden falls on the taxpayer to send on in this bother aren't able to get this very solve on cspan and we can take the someone whoik make the right adjustment. we've written a lot about these ira rollovers, but sometimes they're not administrated properly, and we've made proposals about having reasonable cause so people don't get hit with these penalties. and they can when they've done everythi everything. there's a lot of room for improvement there.
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>> two twooets. hope hole. >> if we've delayed after a certain point in time, you do get interest. the way that congress rong and the interest rate that pe pa you. thaet the law, it not the irs. >> nina wol son, thanks so much for joining us. she is the taxpayer advocate in the united states working out of the irs office. coming up on cspan-3, next a discussion on energy security and reducing u.s. dependence on foreign oil. after that a house hearing on preventing prescription drug abuses and use 40s.
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they will hold a hearing on racial pro filing. senate will investigate the anti-terrorism laws. watch live coverage gekt under way at 10:00 a.m. eastern on cspan-3. jury selection began this week in the retrial of former major league pitcher roger clemens. he filed federal prosecutors with knowingly lying to congress, and in 2008 on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball. >> let me read to you what his wife says in her affidavit. hi, laura petit, do impose and state in 1999-200 roger had to
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take human growth hormones. you have said your conversation with mr. petit never happened. if that was true, why would laura petit remember andy telling her about the conversation? >> once again, i think he misremembers how it went. andy and my relationship was close enough to kn. if he was knowingly knowing that i had taken hdh, we would have talked about the subject. he would have come to me to ask about the effects of it. >> watch this 2008 testimony on line at the c-span video library with over a quarter century of american politics and public affairs on your computer. a group of business executives tried to find alternative enepgy and foreign
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oil. they talked about cost conservatives and electric cars. this is host bid the hudson institute here in washington. this is an hour and 25 minutes. >> good afternoon. welcome. i'm ken weinstein, president and ceo of huson institute. on behalf f hudson institute and our partner for today's events, securing america's future energy, i'd like to welcome everyone to the betsy and walter stern conference center here at hudson. t extend a secl welcome to our cspan viewing audience and to those watching on li at hudson.org. before we get under way, let me make the standard announcement to ask everyone to kindly turn down the ringers on your cell phones -- let me say a few words about hudson institute. hudson institute is a future-oriented, market-oriented
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market research policy organization thats founded in 1961 by the late herman kahn. central to our research agenda, since our founding has been work on natural resources, especially oil, and the role resources play in the global economy. kahn's view, and our view today, is that innovation and human ingenuity, when properly guided, can overcome resource scarcity and provide alternatives that enable us to be prudently optimistic about the future of america and the world. we are co-hosting today's event with securing america's future energy. safe was launched an action-oriented, non-partisan organization dedicated to reducing america's oil dependence by advocating for comprehensive energy reform. safe has done extraordinary w at getting the energy security a issue on the public agenda, thanks in part to its dynamic and strategic founder, safe's
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president, ceo robbie diamond, who is with us today. in 2006, under robbie's @da@ership, safe formed the leadership council. they were dedicated to reducing the u.s. oil dependence. it includes four men who are with us today. all are former marines who care deeply about our country and it's future. and i'll introduce them by the order in which they're seated. frederick w. smith, and co-chair man, fred hit knees to information. fedex is a 38,000 logistical company serving 32 countries with 677 employees, handling
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more tha 6 million shipments every day. he is known as the market of free enterprise and free trade. bob lutz, the former vice chairman ofe chrysler corporation. the auto industry made him a legend largely focused on product development that included senior positions at general motors, ford, bmw and culminated with being the vice chairman of general motors. general james conway retired a 34th kmorcoalder in the united states marine corps. he served as a member of the joint chiefs in a 40-year distinguished career under active duty. under his leadership, the corps grew to 315,000 active reserve
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which he is responsible for organizing, equipping and training. and he was especially responsible for bringing weapons systems into the marine corps. lastly, j.p. kelly. general kelly's extraordinarily distinguished 37-year career which ended in 1987, he commanded marine organizations through every echelon. he also served as a member of the joint chiefs. gentle @ll four of you have been leaders all your lives. we're particularly honored that you continue to be leaders. take me through the future of the national security company in a new way. following their opening remarks which will come in the fo of responses to questions, these four individual -- distinguished individuals have graciously agreed to take questions from the audience. as moderator, i will begin by asking some questions of our
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panelists before turning it over to our conference center audience here for questions and you can also submit questions via now, one last note, i should note how pleased we are to be working with safe and hudson. very different kinds of organizations, but it is significant that we are working together to promote dialogue on energy and public policy. it is an organization -- to address those challenges. you can learn more at secureenergy.org. hudson instituted the research policy organization with some diversity of viewpoints on energy policy, to put it in least. though our scholars are unanimous in promoting further energy ex

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