Private Debt Collection

[Armando Beaujolais]

Is anyone else as concerned as I am about the IRS using private debt collection agencies? It's just so wrong on so many levels. Taxpayer privacy, identity theft, barrier to attempts to settle taxpayer disagreements with the IRS, not to mention the 100% certain harrassment that they say isn't going to happen.

I've got a real bad feeling about this one.

[DaveO]

Bad Idea

I think it’s a bad idea as well. I will hand out the form to send the case back to the IRS to anyone that I work with that gets turned over to an agency. I don’t know what the experience of others on this board has been but I’ve seen a dramatic decline in the quality and knowledge of IRS customer service personnel in the last couple of years. When you luck out and get hold of a good officer, things go much smoother.

The service has said that only cases with undisputed tax due will be sent over. If a taxpayer isn’t concerned enough to pay the IRS themselves what good can a private agency do?

[Armando Beaujolais]

The service has said that only cases with undisputed tax due will be sent over. If a taxpayer isn’t concerned enough to pay the IRS themselves what good can a private agency do?

A private agency can intimidate, harass, and badger a taxpayer. Oh, wait, the IRS says they're not supposed to do that. Right.

Collection used to be a methodical process by mail. Now it will be someone who is not with the IRS and has no ability to solve any problems with the IRS calling people on the phone.

Why not pay IRS personnel to make collection phone calls instead of outsourcing?

Outsourcing is the prevailing business model, so the sheep all just follow along without a care in the world.

This is going to be a mess.

[Bees Knees]

Why not just pay your taxes like the rest of us do. Frankly, I could care less if people who don't pay their taxes get harassed.

[Armando Beaujolais]

Why not just pay your taxes like the rest of us do. Frankly, I could care less if people who don't pay their taxes get harassed.

You've never had a client with a dispute over how much was owed to the IRS? Now instead of taking copies of the collection notices, telling your client everything will be alright, and putting the notices in the file, and waiting for the problem to be resolved, you'll get to deal with client phone calls asking what you can do to make the harrassing phone calls stop.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that every time the IRS says there's an amount due that it's correct.

[Bees Knees]

You've never had a client with a dispute over how much was owed to the IRS?

I’ve never had one with a dispute get turned over to collections. There are procedures to deal with disputes long before the file will ever go to collections.

[Gretel]

Bees, you probably talk about the past. It doesn't mean IRS will always follow their own guidelines. I am concerned too, what will happen. I guess, we will have to wait and see. It doesn't help either to get worked up before anything has happened yet.

[Snaggletoof]

Why did it happen?

We've got to ask ourselves "Why did this happen?"

The IRS, whom the law had already adorned with the Power of God on collection issues, is doing this because they can't collect money. They obviously CAN collect money from those of us who have paychecks to garnish, bank accounts to levy, property to lien, etc. and have been doing this for years.

I think what the private agencies are getting are the judgement-proof debtors. The kind of people you can take to court and win every time, but there is no money to be had. Some of the larger agencies have big networks with a collection agency associate in every town. Easier for them to hustle down offenders in small towns and inner cities than for government bureaucrats to attempt this from the beltway and plush suburban regional office buildings.

Harrassment, intimidation, threats, and the usual practices which border on extortion WILL occur -- there simply won't be a record of it.

[Bees Knees]

Harrassment, intimidation, threats, and the usual practices which border on extortion WILL occur -- there simply won't be a record of it.

Yes, and my point is that the kind of people IRS can't collect from, and thus need the help from private agencies, are the kind of people I don't give two hoots about. None of my clients will ever see private collection agencies after them because I would have fired them as a client long before it would ever come to that.

There are many things the private sector is better at doing, and there are some things government is better at doing. I think the government has decided this is one thing they are not good at. Armando, I can guarantee you that none of your clients will ever have to deal with this. You are getting worked up over nothing.

[sea-tax]

I will have to agree with BEES on this on. I think as usual us accountants and tax prep people are getting worked up for nothing. Now I may change my opinion in a couple months when these collection hounds start actually going to work.

[veritas]

Well I can't let this one pass.

What things can government do better?

[veritas]

I'll answer my own qestion.

The government is best at Spending Money.

[Bees Knees]

Well I can't let this one pass.

What things can government do better?

There are many technologies government has funded associated with the military that private industry later takes advantage of.

For example, the computer....

[veritas]

Government spent money. Private industry developed computer. If the government didn't take our money and waste large amounts of it imagine private industry not needing to ask for their money back to do what they would have naturally done anyway.

[Bees Knees]

Government spent money. Private industry developed computer. If the government didn't take our money and waste large amounts of it imagine private industry not needing to ask for their money back to do what they would have naturally done anyway.

If the government didn't feel the need to do a better job at blowing up their enemy, they wouldn't have spent billions of dollars on computer technology.

Where do you think the word computer came from?

One of the early uses of the term “computer” was to describe the guy who computed the trajectory of a cannon ball so that they knew how high to aim the cannon at the enemy.

There would be no Internet today without the military. Its roots can be traced back to 1958 when the US Department of Defense in response to the launch of Sputnik established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which began work on computer networking technology. In 1962, the RAND corporation (a government agency) was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike. By 1969, the ARPANET was constructed, linking four university computer networks together. In 1972, ARPA was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1973, Bob Kahn from DARPA was among a group that developed TCP/IP, which allowed diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other. Thus, the Internet was born, thanks to the military trying to figure out how to survive a nuclear attack.

There are also all kinds of technology that came into existence as a direct result of the space race to the moon, when Kennedy wanted to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. You think he just wanted to be the first to get there? Of course not. NASA has all kinds of military connections and motivational factors. Most of the small computer technology today was original designed so that they could fit it into the cramped spaces on board the space crafts.

The private sector without military motivation and funding would have never developed such technology.

Governments do a much better job at killing than the private sector. Most of our technology today is a direct result of the government trying to do a better job at killing.