NO MORE BS: The IRS – The Pernicious and Detestable Federal Agency

Now that tax season is, for the most part, completed and behind us for another year.  It occurred to me that many people do not know the power and reach of the IRS in their daily lives.  Plato is quoted as saying, “The price of apathy towards  public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”  No truer words can describe the situation with the IRS, and I think it is time every American knows just how destructive the policies of the IRS have been and continue to be.

Employee

UseLegal.com (2012) provides the actual definition of an employee, “An “employee” is defined as “a preference eligible in the excepted service who has completed one year of current continuous service in the same or similar positions” or “an individual in the excepted service (other than a preference eligible)… who is not serving a probationary or trial period under an initial appointment pending conversion to the competitive service.” Ramos v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 24378 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 6, 2009)”  Essentially, a person can be hired by an employer, but does not attain employee status and protection until that person has been hired for a continual year by the same employer, is not under a ‘probationary period,’ and or appointment.

An employee agrees to be controlled by an employer; that person’s production is only one of the controls granted to an employer.  Employee conduct both on and off the job can be controlled, and the means and manner of producing the work specified.  The right to control is the primary determining factor in this relationship.  The right to control is also the deciding line between freelance workers and employees.  Upon this single imperative hang tax law, the responsibility of parties, risk, and every item in employee/employer relationships, hierarchical structures, and will ultimately decide who or which party is in charge, and is entirely governed by the IRS in America!

The Right to Control

The IRS breaks into three categories the essential components where the ‘Right to Control’ hinges, namely, Behavioral Control, Financial Control, and Type of Relationship.

Behavioral Control:  Relates to the questions, what, where, and how work is completed.  Employees have set schedules, tight restrictions about how to think, where to sit, etc., dictated by the employer.

Financial Control:  Relates to all things money.  The employee is forced to accept all terms of the employer without negotiation, from business expenses to taxes.  Where Financial Control is, risk shortly follows; where risk is, the threat of litigation follows.  Therefore, when the employer has financial Control, risk follows the employer, not the employee.  Profit and loss, tools of the trade, and the freedom to offer services to other organizations are all part of the financial controls relinquished by the employee to the employer.  Under Financial Control falls the following, the Americans with Disabilities Act – 1990 (ADA).

• • The ADA’s seminal beginning originate in 1973 Section 504, which made it illegal to discriminate against those with disabilities if the organization receives Federal Government subsidies.
    • • • “No otherwise qualified individual with handicaps in the United States… shall, solely because of her or his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”(ED.gov, 1995).
        • Classified disabilities by disease; includes “Hidden Disease[s],” is changed constantly to update diseases covered, and dictates the only requirement for the condition is that the disorder “have a material effect on one’s ability to perform a major life activity” (Ed.gov, 1995).
        • Business costs mainly occur in ‘soft’ costs, i.e., changing procedures, reasonable accommodations, etc., something to keep in mind, though, “… noncompliance can cost an employer.  For example, in the fiscal year 2006, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) resolved 15,045 disability discrimination charges.  It recovered $48.8 million in monetary benefits for workers who did not receive accommodations to which they are entitled under the ADA” (Woog, 2008).  Thus, monetarily speaking, noncompliance costs more than compliance.

Type of Relationship:  Relates to all things in the interaction of the two independent parties, including written contracts dictating the interaction, risks, penalties, etc.  The extent of the relationship is a significant point and colludes with permanency and benefits to form the marriage between two independent entities.  The employee forfeits Control in this arena to the employer who automatically sets the terms, demands compliance, and exerts totalitarian Control.

Employee Surveillance

IRS.gov (2018) sets the standard upon which the premise for employee surveillance rests; the business organization holds the right to control, monitor, insist, and legally demand employee behaviors. Goshray (2013) quoted Cashmore (2009) and is correct; employee privacy is dead, and the origination is social media.  Thus, with the IRS granting legal ability to monitor and control employees, there are no other legal or ethical issues, privacy concerns, or anything else wrong with employee surveillance.  If the employee chooses to take issue with the monitoring, that employee is free to end their relationship with the company; in fact, Lyon (2017) substantiated that with newer employees, who have grown up with the acceptance of digital citizenship, surveillance is expected and no privacy concerns exist in the workplace.

Holt, Lang, and Sutton (2017) further inform that employee surveillance does not affect potential employees’ rating of the organization’s ethics, nor the organizational views when monitoring, e.g., employee surveillance is higher than another business in the same industry. Holt et al., (2017) further added that employee surveillance has been, and continues to be, radically changed by the technology available (Waxman & Barile, 2016).  Returning to the organizational “right,” as provided by the government through both edict and legislation, employees have no individual control and relinquish privacy rights upon hire to the employer (IRS.gov, 2018).

Vargas (2017) reviewed a business and found that the employer considers each employee a criminal and that through working for the company, investigated criminalization of employee behaviors is enacted and reproduced.  Essentially, making each employee an automatic suspect anytime a crime occurs, suspecting every transaction, and disciplining for minor changes in expected corporate behaviors. While admittedly, this behavior by the business might be considered extreme, it is not beyond the legal “rights” of the employer.  An argument could be made to treat employees better to reduce churn; in this particular industry (retail), high churn means you pay less in wages because good employees leave quickly and bad employees are fired fast.  Thus, criminalizing the employee is not wrong; employee surveillance is not unethical and should have no consequences for honest employees.

However, labor unions vociferously continue to advocate privacy in the workplace and attempt to place limits upon employee surveillance by a company, completely disregarding the fact that the employer has the legal right and ability to demand and enforce all types of direct and indirect employee surveillance programs (Goshray, 2013; Holt, Lang, and Sutton, 2017; IRS.gov, 2018; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2017; Lyon, 2017; Waxman & Barile, 2016; Vargas, 2017).  While Leclercq-Vandelannoitte (2017) attempts to place ethical constraints, prior knowledge, policies, and procedures around employee surveillance, nothing in the IRS.gov (2018) mandates declare an employer has to mention or warn employees that their every keystroke, every conversation, and every action are directly and indirectly monitored as the “right” of the business.

Is the pernicious role of the IRS now more understood?  Your Employer/Employee relationship is not governed by the NLRB, but by the IRS, and this was by design to protect tax money!  Every action made in an employment situation is governed by the IRS, and the IRS has given great latitude to the employer, making you the property of the IRS, with control granted to your employer.  The IRS remains a danger to every American, and the globe.  Why is the United States the only industrialized nation to not allow options to the employee/employer relationship, squashing innovation, curtailing small businesses opportunities, and unequally tipping the scales for large organizations, look to the IRS!  Want to point fingers, thank President Woodrow Wilson (D) and his complicit Congress and his executive orders!

References

Effelsberg, D., Solga, M., & Gurt, J. (2013). Getting followers to transcend their self-interest for the benefit of their company: Testing a core assumption of transformational leadership theory. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29(1), 131-143. doi:10.1007/s10869-013-9305-x

Ghoshray, S. (2013). Employer surveillance versus employee privacy: The new reality of social media and the workplace. Northern Kentucky Law Review, 40(3), 593-626. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgs&AN=90242325&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Holt, M., Lang, B., & Sutton, S. G. (2017). Potential employees’ ethical perceptions of active monitoring: The dark side of data analytics.Journal of Information Systems, 31(2), 107-124. doi:10.2308/isys-51580

Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, A. (2017). An ethical perspective on emerging forms of ubiquitous IT-based Control.Journal of Business Ethics, 142(1), 139-154. doi: http://dx.doi.org.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/10.1007/s10551-015-2708-z

Lyon, D. (2017). Digital Citizenship and Surveillance| Surveillance Culture: Engagement, Exposure, and Ethics in Digital Modernity. International Journal of Communication, 11, 19.

Waxman, S. S., & Barile, F. G. (2016). “Eye in the sky:” Employee surveillance in the public sector. Albany Law Review, 79(1), 131.

U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS.gov) (2018). Independent contractor vs. employee. Available from http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,id=99921,00.html

U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS.gov). (2018). The Agency, its Mission, and Statutory Authority. Retrieved from http://www.irs.gov/irs/article/0,,id=98141,00.html

Vargas, T. L. (2017). Employees or Suspects? Surveillance and Scrutinization of Low-Wage Service Workers in U.S. Dollar Stores, 20(2), 207–230. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.contentproxy.phoenix.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eoh&AN=EP123822581&site=ehost-live&scope=site

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
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