An Internal Revenue Service tax examiner was arrested this week on charges that he used IRS records to examine personal information of celebrities (and his neighbor).
John Snyder, an IRS tax examiner based in Kentucky, is charged with looking up personal information for 197 celebs. Exactly which celebrities merited such prying by Snyder? The list includes Kevin Bacon (of course – there’s your six degrees), Alec Baldwin, Sally Field, Vanna White, Eddie Albert, John Cleese, Timothy Bottoms, Portia De Rossi, Penny Marshall, Randy Quaid, Tara Reid, Maura Tierney, Chevy Chase, Steffi Graf, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs players, and Bengals coach Marvin Lewis.
[At least those folks are filing their taxes, I guess (unlike Wesley Snipes).]
Snyder was caught when authorities audited who was accessing personal and tax information stored on a federal database called the Integrated Data Retrieval Systems. Snyder, who works in the business division, had no reason to be accessing that database.
Improperly accessing IRS data is a misdemeanor (really, only a misdemeanor?). Snyder faces up to a year in prison and a $250,000 fine if found guilty. No word on whether he is still employed by the IRS.
(Hat Tip: TaxProf Blog)
That would be tough to resist… I think medical and hospital employees have been getting nailed lately too, for looking at records of Britney Spears and other people that are “hospitalized” for “exhaustion”.
Who would have thought that Wesley Snipes and Willie Nelson would have been tax scofflaws? Our horrible national tax structure makes for some strange bedfellows.
I wonder if this guy was in the Newport KY branch of the IRS. Did anyone say?
(I am a small business person who has been struggling to integrate internet sales and Quickbooks through the computer which is not just a notion although it should be by this point. Taxes fascinate me now where they were simply unpleasant before I started my own business. Go Taxgirl!)