Score one for the good guys. Richard Hatch, the first million dollar winner on "Survivor" is being hauled into court by the IRS for failure to pay taxes on his winnings. (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0118051hatch1.html)
I don't like what the economists call "free riders", so I'm happy. But the Washington Post's Richard Leiby (The Reliable Source column) played it for laughs, implying Hatch was stupid not to realize that the IRS watches Survivior and checks up on winnings. He made an assumption (one of my pet peeves) which may be wrong. I hope it's wrong. I hope we aren't paying any bureaucrats to watch TV to catch winners of quiz and reality shows. Put aside the question of what would be a fair salary for such duty. (Full disclosure, I've never watched a reality show.) As a bureaucrat (retired) I think the fairest and most effective tax collecting system is just that, a system, ideally computerized.
If IRS doesn't have TV watchers, how was Hatch caught? Possibly an informer, which may be hard to believe, as apparently he's the most lovable of men. But an informer might even pick up a percentage of the take (I'm no expert on tax law). I hope that wasn't the case--there may be instances where only an insider who turns his coat can catch a law violator, but they should be rare.
I hope what happened is the IRS systems worked. The network (or "Survivor Entertainment Group") included the payment in its report to IRS, along with all the other payments of salaries and bonuses that would qualify as income to the recipient. When Mr. Hatch's 1040 came in, I hope an IRS system matched it against the network report and found the discrepancy.
Of course the media has little interest in such issues, which can build public mistrust of our hardworking bureaucrats.
(Faceless bureaucrats aren't paranoid--they have real enemies.)
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