The tax-relief industry loves to make IRS problems sound impossible without them. They're not. I'm Darrin Mish. I've been representing taxpayers before the IRS for 32 years. Let me explain how this actually works.
The contentious issue of legislation barring tax information from being released that could lead to missing children may be changed soon. According to the Justice Department’s statistics, about 200,000 children are abducted each year, mostly by family members. In 2007, the Treasury department found that out of 1,700 family abductions, more than one third of the abductors used the child’s Social Security number to claim them as dependants in their tax returns. This means the child’s and the abductor’s whereabouts are known to the IRS.
California Rep. Pete Stark and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, both from the Republican party, introduced legislation recently that would disbar the IRS from sharing some taxpayer information with law enforcement in order to locate missing children.
At a news conference on the occasion of National Missing Children day, Stark said, “The information is there, and there’s no reason that law enforcement, given a proper identification, shouldn’t have that available tool that will protect the tax privacy of the parents where it is needed.” Klobuchar added, “One of the ways we can try everything is by unearthing and opening up some information that’s sitting in computers right now, and making sure, following all protections, that it gets in the hands of the local law enforcement that need it to find these missing children.” Also present at the press conference along with Stark and Klobuchar were Republican Minnesota Rep. Erik Paulsen, Republican Ohio Rep. Pat Tiberi and Democratic Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney.
Nonprofit organization, One Missing Link, headed by Janis McCall whose own daughter, Stacy was abducted along with a friend and the friend’s mother since 1992 came out in full support of the proposed legislation and urged Congress to endorse it.
McCall said, “If we’re able to do this, if we’re able to cross-match and use these Social Security numbers from IRS, if the law enforcement is able to, then there are probably 20,000 children out there that can be reunited with the custodial parent, the one that has been searching for many years, so it’s especially important.”
Even though the legislation would not bring her daughter back, McCall is optimistic it would help many other families.
Commenting on her own daughter Stacy’s abduction, McCall said, “We have no idea who took them. We have no idea where they are. All we can do is keep praying.”
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