To raise revenue, the feds plan to stick their noses deeper into small-business financial records.
Carson Stanwood has no problem with the Internal Revenue Service going after tax cheats. The founder of Stanwood & Partners Public Relations, based in Jackson Hole, Wyo., understands that paying their taxes in full puts small-business owners like him at a competitive disadvantage against the corner cutters.
But when contemplating some of the Treasury Department’s recent enforcement proposals - such as vastly expanding the number of Form 1099s he would have to issue and requiring him to verify his independent contractors’ taxpayer IDs with the IRS - Stanwood, 47, changes his tune.
“I applaud them going after this until I hear that it’s going to vastly increase my paperwork. I believe it would add 20 to 25 percent to what I pay my bookkeeper - another $6,000 or $7,000 a year - which would suck,” says Stanwood, whose firm took in about $1.5 million last year. “That’s two or three laptops the employees won’t get, smaller Christmas bonuses, or an epic vacation my wife and I don’t take.”