AUGUSTA, Maine — Without taking a final vote, a Maine legislative panel has scaled back a bill aimed at so-called tax zapper computer programs that help tax cheats.
The Taxation Committee on Tuesday removed a section that would make the bill take effect immediately after passage. It also removed references to estimated losses tax zappers are costing the state government.
Bowdoinham Democratic Rep. Seth Berry’s bill would ban software programs that falsify electronic sales records so businesses can underreport the totals and lower their sales tax bills.
The tax-evading programs, which can be installed through flash drives, have been detected in other states and countries. Georgia has passed a law barring them, and the National Conference of State Legislatures says six states besides Maine are considering them.
We citizens need to band together and distribute a free shareware version of Tax Zapper.
The best way to kill a tumor is to cut off its blood supply.
Republicans will oppose this because they like tax cheaters.
yessah
The biggest tax cheat is Maine Revenue Services itself. They make up retroactive rules to suit their own purposes to maximize their take from innocent people whom they bully.
Like what? I was always under the impression that you can be convicted or arressted or harmed for laws that are now pass, but you didn’t before it was passed.
Laws yes, rules no. I personally know a person that lost his life savings when the DEP went decades back to cover the cost of oil found on the site of a former gas station/garage. It wasn’t from illegal dumping but from motor oil that had seeped into the garage bay floors.
He sold the business and was 4-5 owners removed from the DEP rule but he had to pay to help “mitigate” the site. What about the other owners you might ask? Well some kicked in, one was dead and one couldn’t be found. So between helping to pay for the clean up and the fines (which the rules weren’t in place when he owned the site) he lost his life savings.
That is eviromental rules and clean up. Who should be responsble for the clean up? It sounds like they went after all the owners not just singling him out. Even tax rules are rarely enacted retro activily, if ever. I am trying to think of some but can’t right now. It seems like the rules were in place when they went to do clean up. If the rules were not in place when they went to clean up I don’t think it would be the same. It is a shame about your friend. Horrible.
Changes in tax rates have commonly been made retroactive. MRS is even worse in its ‘reinterpretations’ of laws, making new rules retroactively and not intended by the legislature, such as its attacks on private pilots from out of state, owners who used to rent their property to vacationers, and assisted living facilities who provide meals to elderly residents.
The mentality in MRS, for the last several years especially, has been to go through old laws in search of “reinterpretations” that can be retroactively exploited to shake people down with additional kinds of taxes not previously imposed. They not only impose the new “taxes”, but add on enormous “penalties” and “interest”. It is one of the ways the Baldacci administration increased taxes, in the name of “enforcement”, without the legislature approving higher taxes. The bureaucrats responsible for it, including Jerome Gerard, are still there. MRS leverages its take in these schemes by exploiting the fact that (as with DEP) there is also no statute of limitations in Maine tax law.
This is a problem that compounds “retroactive” law with more broadly non-objective law in which an agency has dictatorial powers to make up its own rules, with the victims unable to know in advance of their own actions what is allowed and what isn’t. On top of that, MRS has the power to impose “estimated” taxes — plus penalties and interest — that it makes up, and the power to “interpret” both the amounts of imposed taxes and the meaning of law with the victim required to prove his innocence to the satisfaction of a bureaucracy that has already made up its mind.
MRS operations are a civil rights nightmare. The kind of dictatorial powers it has been granted through vague and open-ended legislation has no place in a free society.
If Republicans “like tax cheats” then why do we find one in the form of the Secretary of the Treasury under President Obama?
that’s 10 million that the state could use, but as long as there is a system people will cheat it.
How about they make sure Maine Revenue has the tools to detect this. Banning the program does not make it go away and it is already against the law to evade taxes. Just banning the program seems like feel good legislation. Finding them in use and prosecuting is what is going deter their use.
It doesn’t ‘ban’ a program at all, and doesn’t say anything about ‘detecting’ its alleged use. It gives more power to MRS to criminalize people using any program it deems to be a ‘tax zapper’ — which can literally be any program anyone uses related to processing ‘sales’. It is more open-ended authority for this abusive agency operating outside of objective law to persecute and bully innocent people it chooses to hound. There have been so many problems with MRS abuse that you would think the legislature would rein it in rather giving it more ambiguous powers.
Falsifying tax records is already illegal. LD1764 does not ban any specific program; it riminalizes people use whatever programs Maine Revenue Service calls a ‘tax zapper’. LD1764 is so vaguely worded that it gives more arbitrary, discretionary power to Maine Revenue Services to make anyone into a “criminal” who uses virtually any software to process “sales” when MRS doesn’t like their tax returns. The agency has the power to make “estimates” of taxes it demands and the power to make bureaucratic accusations and “interpretations” of the law under which the victim has to prove his innocence and prove MRS wrong. MRS exploits this discretionary power to brutally bully innocent people under non-objective law, giving this agency dictatorial powers. More vague law allowing more MRS “interpretations” of software cannot be stopped in court once the vague law takes effect. The last thing we need is for MRS to have the power to decree the use of software to be criminal when it is hounding someone. This is a civil rights nightmare. This agency needs to be reined in and reformed, not given more discretionary power.