“ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE”
by Fergus Hodgson, Tax Revolution Institute, ©2016
(Sep. 7, 2016) — When an organization announces a new initiative, what do you expect? A staff list, contact details, social media, and invitations to engage? Not when it’s the Internal Revenue Service.
The new IRS Sharing Economy Resource Center, announced on August 22, has none of the above. Aside from a single webpage and a press release, it offers zero new content and merely links to existing pages.
The sharing economy has been exploding, much of it unabashedly illegal, and is placing pressure on tax and regulatory agencies to modernize and welcome the new entrants. Airbnb alone, the accommodation-sharing website, grew from 47,000 paying guests in 2010 to 17 million in 2015 (p. 3, PDF).
Further, Christopher David, chief executive and founder of Arcade City — a new ride-sharing application — estimates that tax non-compliance among drivers of any rideshare is “massive relative to any other similarly regulated industry.” During a phone interview from Austin, Texas, he compared the breakdown to bitcoin activity, where the IRS has “made [compliance] not at all easy or feasible … almost impossible.”
Hear the interview and read the rest here.