Again, the IRS Thanks Me for Playing
I received a note today from one of the sites I do freelance writing work for. I will paraphrase. It went mostly like this:
Dear Christine,
We have alerted the IRS to the fact that we pay you as a freelancer (even though it is less than the required notification amount). And they have alerted us to the fact that you used a pen name. Since we previously did not have any utility on our system to protect the privacy of our authors, such as yourself, most of them have fibbed to us about their identity. The IRS does not look kindly on that. And we’re kind of getting screwed.
Furthermore, the IRS notifies Homeland Security when it fails to properly identify people. Therefore, we will no longer be hiring unverified U.S. Citizens. So if you are one, identify yourself as such. Otherwise, we can’t pay you. If you are a foreign national, too bad for you.
Telling us the truth will only take a few minutes. So log into your account and do it before all of these forms are due from us to the IRS and we don’t have them.
Thanks.
Nice. I can hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing in my head.
I don’t know what’s worse: to have a job and receive this kind of notice, or to have no job and still have to pay taxes.