The institution with the most to gain is the Internal Revenue Service. The computer age has been very good to the IRS, which now has access to any number of databases that yield reality checks on any given citizen’s tax returns. Traceable cash would accelerate this process, and the tax-collection agency can’t wait to take advantage of it. “We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we’d like to go to.”
Predictor: Brueck, Coleta
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine on e-cash, Steven Levy quotes Coleta Brueck, project manager for the IRS’s Document Processing System. Levy writes: ”The institution with the most to gain is the Internal Revenue Service. The computer age has been very good to the IRS, which now has access to any number of databases that yield reality checks on any given citizen’s tax returns. Traceable cash would accelerate this process, and the tax-collection agency can’t wait to take advantage of it. In a recent speech – presented on April 15, no less! – Coleta Brueck, the project manager for the IRS’s Document Processing System, described some of the IRS’s plans. These include the so-called ‘Golden Eagle’ return, in which the government automatically gathers all relevant aspects of a person’s finances, sorts them into appropriate categories and then tallies the tax due. ‘One-stop service,’ as Brueck puts it. This information would be fed to other government agencies, as well as states and municipalities, which would draw upon it for their own purposes. She vows “absolutely” that this will happen, assuming that Americans will be grateful to be relieved of the burden of filing any taxes. The government will simply take its due. ‘If I know what you’ve made during the year, if I know what your withholding is, if I know what your spending pattern is, I should be able to generate for you a tax return,’ she says. ‘I am an excellent advocate of return-free filing. We know everything about you that we need to know. Your employer tells us everything about you that we need to know. Your activity records on your credit cards tell us everything about you that we need to know. Through interface with Social Security, with the DMV, with your banking institutions, we really have a lot of information, so why … at the end of the year or on April 15, do we ask the Post Office to encumber itself with massive numbers of people out there, with picking up pieces of paper that you are required to file? … I don’t know why. We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we’d like to go to.'”
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Tax Issues
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: E-Money (That’s What I Want)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/emoney_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney