Inc. reports that four Democratic senators - Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Mark Begich, D-Alaska; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; and Evan Bayh, D-Ind – sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman expressing their concerns about the new 1099 reporting rules:
“The new requirements may place a hardship on small businesses by creating an extra paperwork burden,” the senators wrote. “Not only will a 1099 form be necessary for millions of new transactions, the stricter requirements force business owners to collect taxpayer identification information from vendors, contractors, and other companies.”
“We insist that the IRS develop ways in which small businesses can reduce expected paperwork from this requirement — possibly through consolidating existing forms, for example — and that the IRS report its proposed solutions to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship prior to implementation of the new law,” they wrote.
Nice try, Senators, but that won’t cut it.
The new 1099 reporting requirement doesn’t need to be polished, it needs to be abolished. Not only will it increase the paperwork burden of small businesses, it will increase the paperwork burden of the already overburdened IRS. And all for a nominal benefit.
The IRS is incapable of answering more than half of the telephone calls made to it by taxpayers seeking guidance on federal tax laws and Congress, in it’s infinite collective wisdom, deems it wise to make it assume the additional burden of monitoring and matching hundreds of millions of new 1099 information returns.
That, my friends, is about as smart as asking a one-armed wallpaper hanger to juggle a bowling ball, an egg and an axe. It cannot and it will not come to good.
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1 New 1099 Reporting Rules Given Last Rites? // Jan 21, 2011 at 10:19 am
[...] Senators Ask IRS to Streamline New 1099 Reporting Rules [...]
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