Forbes.com Apr 18th, 2013
Every once in a while, something comes along that I know, in principle, as a citizen, I should be concerned about, that just does not interest me. The current flap about the IRS reading e-mails without a warrant is an example. Senator Grassley is making a big deal out of it.
“The IRS has a very high burden to treat taxpayers within legal bounds and without abusive intrusion of privacy. The agency’s written materials suggest agents have the ability to access taxpayer emails without warrants. Acting Commissioner Miller said today this isn’t the agency position. If it’s not agency policy or practice, the IRS needs to clarify the true policy in writing, agency-wide. That’s critical. But it’s not enough. The IRS also needs to explain its aggressive stance in internal documents about accessing electronic communications and whether it in fact accessed electronic communications without search warrants and if so, when and why. The IRS has to take this issue seriously, and a casual explanation is inadequate. I’ll ask Acting Commissioner Miller follow-up questions on this issue to be answered in writing for the hearing record, as a start.”
Here is why I don’t care. I never put anything in an e-mail that I would care about the IRS seeing and neither should you. When you send an e-mail, you should go on the assumption that within a few days there will be a gazillion copies of it. The system you send it from probably has multiple back-ups as does the system of the recipient and the systems of the unlimited number of people the recipient might forward it to.
Never mind that there is that chance that you will send the e-mail to the adjacent name in the drop down list. How do you make sure the dirty joke for John Brown does not go to Joanne Brown? Don’t send dirty jokes out in e-mails.
People do have this tendency to want to cover one of their body parts, by documenting things through e-mails. I have been thoroughly convinced of what a bad idea that is by the Sixth Circuit Ellefsen decision. Ellelfsen entered into a really lame trust arrangement. His CPA tried to convince him that it was a bad thing to do. The CPA kept trying and trying, writing numerous times. Instead of convincing his now ex-client to stop being stupid, he ended up helping the government build its willfulness case. The bottom line is that even sound advice in writing is not always helpful.
So go ahead and be upset about the IRS e-mail snooping. Write your congressperson or your senator. In the meantime, don’t generate any e-mails that would make their snooping worthwhile.
You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.