Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Audits

  • With April 15 past, and absent extension, are taxes, preparation and payment, just a memory, but now, should we fret audit from the IRS green eye shade gang?
  • Are IRS rules fair with look back provisions of 3 years, the norm, though 6 to 10 years and more are possible with taxes, fees and onerous interest accumulating from the date of the original filing and compounded daily?
  • Do we bridle under such potential burden? Shouldn’t charges start after audit completion?
  • IRS audits aside, where are the green eye shade audits to determine the effectiveness of government and government programs?
  • Does the GAO yellow book with its GAGAS (how apt) audit federal government departments and agencies.
  • When the Generally Accepted Government Accounting Standards find failing, what happens?
  • Not much? An occasional headline?
  • Do the IGs have responsibility to ferret out fraud, waste and abuse but, bound to their departments, is there an inherent conflict of interest?
  • Would outside IGs be preferable?
  • Still, is it the rare federal program that gets audited/graded for effectiveness, i.e., bang for the buck?
  • Is a federal program the nearest thing to eternal life on earth?
  • Is there an even more agonizing, macro, fiscal matter that makes eyes glaze over even in a pivotal election year (aren’t they all)?
  • What if the recent government financial report reports that America’s current fiscal path is unsustainable?
  • Has the Debt to GDP ratio exploded (near 100%) with particular booms going off in the last few years?
  • Serious enough to be truly existential for our American experiment, what’s do be done?
  • Is the “good news” that we only have to achieve a major reduction in spending and/or tax increases that average 4.5% of GDP over each of the next 75 years?
  • Is the bad news that, starting now, the number is a trillion dollars a year that is almost equal to the total income tax paid by individuals that makes up the largest portion, near 50%, of all federal government revenue? Does delay cause even more pain?
  • Is there really bad monetary news as well that higher prices and government generated inflation are expected to persist and will create additional fiscal bow wave?
  • Is the most dismal news that the current financial report, even just its recommended executive summary, will get little, if any, attention, as it is all too green eye shade for ignorant and gluttonous politicians and public?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The appetites, answers and actions are yours.