"a mistake in tax reporting led 11,000 employees to pay taxes on income they did not receive.... years for which employees will not be able to claim refunds because of the statute of limitations."
Think of it as kicking in a little more to help out this bankrupt government, and having allowed them to $ati$fy inve$tors for a few mere months.
One hell of a trick, huh? Don't hire a tax lawyer who was educated at Harvard.
"Thousands of employees affected by Harvard tax mistake" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff, February 08, 2014
Four of the last seven US Treasury secretaries hold Harvard degrees, but that hasn't stopped the august university from running into problems with federal taxes.
No wonder the economy is in such $hit $hape.
Harvard University officials acknowledged Friday that a mistake in tax reporting led 11,000 employees to pay taxes on income they did not receive — to the tune of millions of dollars — between 2009 and 2013.
The university pledged on Friday to reimburse employees for the excess taxes they paid or help them file amended returns.
But that promise came only after a scathing critique from two Harvard Law School professors, Alvin C. Warren and Daniel I. Halperin. The professors wrote to colleagues this week that the letter the Harvard benefits office sent affected employees in January was “misleading as to both the scope of the problem and the university’s responsibility to make some 11,000 employees whole for a monumental mistake by the central administration.”
When you can't trust the educational system to tell you the truth, what hope do we have?
****************
As a result, a small number of employees paid as much as $3,000 to $4,000 too much in taxes last year, Halperin estimated. Hundreds paid a few hundred dollars extra.
“We regret this mistake, offer our sincere apologies to those affected, and are working to remedy the situation as comprehensively and swiftly as possible, ” Harvard spokesman Paul Andrew said in a statement Friday evening.
The Globe obtained the law professors’ memo, as well as Harvard’s letter of apology e-mailed to employees on Friday. The developments were initially reported by the website Universal Hub.
That's why it is a Slow Saturday Special that will soon vanish!
Due to a “peculiar IRS rule,” Harvard’s supplemental life insurance policy was until 2009 regarded by the Internal Revenue Service as a taxable subsidy that had to be reported as income by employees enrolled in the policy, Halperin said in an interview. That year, he said, Harvard changed the life insurance plan for unrelated reasons, but apparently no one realized the changes meant the insurance was no longer a taxable subsidy.
****************
How could this happen at the academic home of Lawrence H. Summers, who served as president of Harvard sandwiched between a stint as treasury secretary and another as the top economic adviser to President Obama?
Yeah, how could the economy be looted by the same firms giving him hundreds of thousands for speeches -- when his hand wasn't at the tiller of the US economic ship-of-state?
“Larry Summers is not doing the payroll,” noted Halperin, who specializes in employee benefits law. “I don’t think Harvard is any different from anybody else. The people who are in human resources and accounting, I don’t think are any different from people employed in other places.”
Note: don't hire Harvard graduates to do payroll, either.
Halperin and Warren were so concerned by Harvard’s Jan. 21 notification to employees that they set up a meeting with Hausammann and other administrators. Then, on Tuesday, the two professors e-mailed law school faculty and staff a memo titled “Major Harvard Tax Error,” which detailed flaws in the university’s initial announcement.
The obfuscations come with the damage control.
(Note to self: don't hire Harvard graduates for public relations)
They said the university had not only understated the financial impact on employees, but had also misstated the law by telling them that the IRS would not allow Harvard to assist employees in seeking a refund. Harvard’s Jan. 21 notification to employees also did not offer to repay them for the cost of filing amended returns, the professors wrote, or even acknowledge that the problem went back as far as 2009 and 2010, years for which employees will not be able to claim refunds because of the statute of limitations involved.
“In our view, Harvard has a responsibility to make its employees whole for its colossal error,” they wrote.
And on Friday, Harvard said it would do just that, ensuring employees would be repaid by Harvard or the government, and offering information on how to file an amended return.
No harm, no foul?
Hausammann also told employees that the university would undertake a review, with the help of outside experts, of how Harvard handles tax and benefit matters.
Why does it come to this? Why is the tax code so complicated?
--more--"
FLASHBACKS:
Below the fold is an item regarding identity theft at the IRS.
"Across the country, the theft of taxpayer identities has taken off, while receiving far less attention than the loss of credit card information.
Related: AmeriKa Media Missing the Target
Yeah, they can't solve it even though the NSA is scooping up all computer communications.
Even some drug dealers, always with an eye out for easy profits, have turned to taxpayer identity theft after hearing how uncomplicated it was to scam the IRS.
Which bank laundered the refund check?
A medical assistant at a nursing home stole the identities of hundreds of patients. A prison guard stole the identities of inmates and filed false returns under their names. While the IRS said it discovered many of the incidents, the cumulative thefts have resulted in billions of dollars in potentially fraudulent refunds, according to an array of government reports.
And what is to blame for all this?
Understaffing and lack of training at the IRS, and the political pressure to get refunds quickly to taxpayers at a time when Congress has been cutting the agency’s budget.
Oh, the poor (and unconstitutional) IRS as the workload has increased geometrically because of Obummercare? Remember, now the IRS is going to have access to all your medical data!
Related: "The deal buoyed Wall Street investors. Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm, concluded that as a result overall Pentagon spending will remain relatively the same for the next several years before it begins to grow once again, at about 2.5 percent per year."
Also see: Sweet Breakfast From the Boston Globe
Maybe you would like pizza for lunch?
And just try getting a tax hike on the rich through Congre$$!
A number of identity theft cases have been committed by tax preparers, from their offices. Preparers have filed returns using a client’s information and then had all or part of the refunds sent to themselves. One-third of the potentially fraudulent returns were filed by paid preparers.
Nevertheless, if you turn to the Money & Careers section you will find the Globe turning to a tax preparer to create scenarios for the crowd they $erve, and promoting another conventional myth repeatedly propagated by the propaganda pre$$. That is your "tax increase" on the wealthy.
As for the rest of us....
The purpose of the earned income tax credit is to give money to working people who still cannot make ends meet.
Related: "A strong stock market and better business climate have continued to concentrate American wealth in the top 1 percent of earners."
No problem making ends meet at the top.
Susan Kooperstein, ABCD spokeswoman, said the earned income tax credit can have a big impact on the lives of the poor.
Yeah, it can turn your life around says Joop!
Arlene Carr, 48, of Dorchester, who earned just $19,000 last year, was laid off from her job as a cashier at Hudson News in September.
In the midst of an economic recovery gaining momentum as Massachusetts does better than the nation?
Wow, the new$paper indu$try really has come on tough times.
Still unemployed, she has struggled to make ends meet for her and her two teenage children, relying on food stamps and cutting expenses wherever she could.
I wouldn't rely on the food stamps unless you want pizza!
In Massachusetts, more than 400,000 people received the earned income tax credit last year, putting $798 million into the pockets of local residents, according to Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s office. “Generally the people who are going to get the tax return, they don’t have the means for saving,” Walsh said in an interview. “They need it to buy food, they need it to heat their house, and they need to pay their rent. It goes right back into the economy.”
I didn't know Walsh was the mayor of Massachusetts. I thought he was the mayor of Boston -- and never you mind those heating aid cuts or $1.8 trillion in cold hard cash corporations are sitting on. Besides, Obummer has your retirement taken care of.
Meanwhile, small business is complaining because their extenders haven't been renewed.
Hey, maybe they will get lucky and get a gift.
The Globe then advises you to use the free software and file online to speed that refund (in contradiction to the part 1 of 2 IRS special on page A1 regarding identity theft; and you wonder why I'm subdued this morning?) in the face of the hacking epidemic
(where the solution to a sophisticated swindle can sometimes be the simple action most people would take if a stranger knocked on their door at night: They wouldn’t answer.
Just don't do it in Detroit or North Carolina), and despite the fact that
"in case after case, court records show criminals have used tax-filing software to obtain refunds,"
even though my personal information isn't worth much?
But it is really drug dealers, gangs, and and arrogant individuals like Rashia Wilson, who
"posted on her Facebook page that she was the “queen of IRS tax fraud,” along with a picture that showed her hoisting bound wads of bills, according to court records. She dared the government to catch her, writing on Facebook, “I’m a millionaire for the record, so if U think indicting me will B easy it won’t, I promise you!”, according to prosecutors. The money piled up as Wilson submitted one false return after another, the indictment said."
So all the spying and all the tyranny doesn't amount to $hit, huh?
The main agenda-pu$hing point one takes away from this collection of whoreporate pre$$ articles in the government mouthpiece is to file and get those taxes paid! Get some money into the coffers of this fraudulent and corporate looting machine called government -- so the money can then be doled out to certain $elect intere$ts (can you really believe anything you see on your TV anymore). Nothing new there!
I hope the higher tax bill makes you happy! Never mind what the vendors and federal workers owe! No need for a refund there!
Forgotten amongst all this is the impeachable use of the IRS by the Obummer administration. That's all down the memory hole because the problem has been fixed (by an Obummer loyalist).
Meanwhile, small business is complaining because their extenders haven't been renewed.
Hey, maybe they will get lucky and get a gift.
The Globe then advises you to use the free software and file online to speed that refund (in contradiction to the part 1 of 2 IRS special on page A1 regarding identity theft; and you wonder why I'm subdued this morning?) in the face of the hacking epidemic
(where the solution to a sophisticated swindle can sometimes be the simple action most people would take if a stranger knocked on their door at night: They wouldn’t answer.
Just don't do it in Detroit or North Carolina), and despite the fact that
"in case after case, court records show criminals have used tax-filing software to obtain refunds,"
even though my personal information isn't worth much?
But it is really drug dealers, gangs, and and arrogant individuals like Rashia Wilson, who
"posted on her Facebook page that she was the “queen of IRS tax fraud,” along with a picture that showed her hoisting bound wads of bills, according to court records. She dared the government to catch her, writing on Facebook, “I’m a millionaire for the record, so if U think indicting me will B easy it won’t, I promise you!”, according to prosecutors. The money piled up as Wilson submitted one false return after another, the indictment said."
So all the spying and all the tyranny doesn't amount to $hit, huh?
The main agenda-pu$hing point one takes away from this collection of whoreporate pre$$ articles in the government mouthpiece is to file and get those taxes paid! Get some money into the coffers of this fraudulent and corporate looting machine called government -- so the money can then be doled out to certain $elect intere$ts (can you really believe anything you see on your TV anymore). Nothing new there!
I hope the higher tax bill makes you happy! Never mind what the vendors and federal workers owe! No need for a refund there!
Forgotten amongst all this is the impeachable use of the IRS by the Obummer administration. That's all down the memory hole because the problem has been fixed (by an Obummer loyalist).
*******
The second part of the IRS special leads the paper today:
"The story of the IRS today is one of a powerful entity at a tipping point — under attack, distrusted, and underfunded, yet crucial to the nation’s survival and prosperity.
So sayeth the Boston Globe.
Yes, and the agency that exists to steal wealth from the American people to pour it into the war machine and give it to the upper-class elites, corporate interests, and well-connected friends is crucial to the nation's survival and prosperity.
Week after week, Republicans on Capitol Hill have ratcheted up their drumbeat of discontent with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that it targeted conservative groups and can’t be trusted. Six investigations are underway, ensuring the matter will drag on for months or years.
Six investigations and yet this is all I've seen about the scandal in months. The only reason they are dragging on is because they are being covered up for the "good of the country." Impeachment of this president would upend the whole $y$tem, unlike the fake diversion of Clinton-Lewinski.
And the people they are allegedly serving, you and me?
The IRS is increasingly impenetrable to taxpayers with questions and complaints. The agency is so short-staffed it cannot answer nearly 40 percent of phone calls, and it has failed to meet its own 45-day deadline to respond to millions of letters per year from taxpayers. The same dismal rate is likely to be repeated this year, according to the agency.
But you better damn well respond to one of theirs!
