From here and from there - Holiday addition
Today, in commemoration of the date, our collected links will be about our taxes and how they are being allocated:
When executives in the private sector engage in accounting games, resulting in loss of their investors money, they can end up in jail. However, instead of applying the same rules, or even tougher standards to the accounting standards of the public money — which was “invested” involuntarily — we have completely different set of rules:
The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it’s virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the department’s brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can’t be…
Until the Pentagon can get its records in order, no comprehensive audit is required. Instead, the department writes each year to the inspector general certifying that “material amounts” in its financial reports can’t be substantiated.
That it can’t be audited “goes to the heart of the department’s credibility,” says Dov Zakheim, who was Defense Department chief financial officer and comptroller under Rumsfeld. “Nobody would trust even a half-million-dollar enterprise if its books weren’t clean.”
The Pentagon has repeatedly assured Congress that it is working toward an audit. Yet the projected date continues to slip further away. In 1995, Pentagon officials testified that it could be audited by 2000. In 2006, an audit wasn’t envisioned until 2016.
We can also discuss the Tax Withholding and wonder what would be the effect on the tax rate:
Did you have to write out a check to the IRS for $5,581 this past April 15? If you had to do such a thing next year, would you think of it as your civic duty or would you consider it a crime that only the government could get away with?
And we will conclude the day festivities with the Beatles Cartoon - Taxman:
Tags: Accounting Standards, Budget, Tax Day, Tax Withholding, Taxes
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Rogel @ April 15, 2008