{"id":3450,"date":"2015-12-30T13:35:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T20:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2018-02-05T12:36:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:36:52","slug":"small-funding-related-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=3450","title":{"rendered":"Small Funding-related Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

One person has already called me<\/a> “a paid propagandist working for the fossil-fuel-industry-financed Heartland Institute”. At a climate alarmist site I sometimes comment at, another person has said<\/a> (full context here<\/a>) Heartland pays me to “side-step, deflect, distract, obfuscate, and deny the truth” (that person being someone who – unless I’ve missed it somewhere – who has yet to dispute a solitary detail I have here at GelbspanFiles or in any of my online articles). However, no less than a large arm of the U.S. Government has admitted, in not so few words, that I am not employed in any way by Heartland.<\/p>\n

I’ve always filed my own taxes, but in March 2014 I was stumped on how my strings-free 2013 $12,000 Heartland grant (first detailed and long disclosed in section 3 of my About page<\/a>) would be handled on my income tax form, so I took my papers to a free tax preparation service for poor people. Much time was wasted with an English-as-second-language person who entered me into her computer program as a self-employed individual, resulting in the program being unable to complete my tax return, despite me repeatedly pointing out that I was not employed and did not operate a business of any description. Now, when it comes to filing the tax for a business, it’s a new case altogether. The business owner firstly has to send out W-2 forms with the SSA to all their employees. Then, they have to file a W-3<\/a> form that is a summarized version of the W-2 forms that they have handed out to everyone. All these documents need to be sent before January 31st. Though I did not have so many documents to file and collect, I was still new to the whole process of filing the tax. Finally, a supervisor instructed her to put my grant into “other income”, and the program resolved its glitch. It is only during such moments that I wish I had a personal tax accountant<\/a>; these problems probably wouldn’t even have happened in the first place if that was the case. About a month later, I got a letter from the IRS saying “The income you reported on line 21, Form 1040, indicates you may be liable for self-employment tax<\/em>.” How could that be? I clearly had the tax prep people mark the grant as a gift. So I immediately replied, clarifying the situation as clearly as I possibly could – I was unemployed, not self-employed, and the grant was a gift, not payment for work done. Since the IRS didn’t reply in any way, I thought that was the end of that.<\/p>\n

Then I received an IRS letter over a year later, this year<\/em> in May, saying in regard to my income for 2013, that it might be subject to self-employment tax. I replied to say the situation had already been asked and answered, I politely repeated my explanation, and further added that my 2014 grant<\/a> fell under the same strings-free gift category.<\/p>\n

A month later the IRS hit me with its “Income Tax Examination Changes” re-do of my return — emphasis on the word “Changes<\/em><\/strong>” — which included pointless recalculations for self-employment tax. They also declared that I owed nearly $1,700 in back taxes and fines, and further said I hadn’t supplied a corrected MISC-1099 form with my prior letter about my income being a gift. So, I replied with my same previous explanation, and further noted that IRS’ previous letter never indicated a requirement to supply a corrected 1099 form or anything else like that. I also sought out tax advice from a friend of mine who worked as a Melbourne accountant<\/a> but had also worked in accounting in the US a while back.<\/p>\n

A month later on July 31st, an IRS person called me, and after offering my explanation for the fourth time, the lady said I was now required to get a Heartland letterhead explanation of my strings-free grant, and a corrected 1099. I notified Heartland immediately about this, but due to their transition from one office to another, along with other more pressing obligations, their response was delayed. <\/p>\n

The IRS being a place that probably operates under automatically generated paperwork, I then received a Notice of Deficiency in September, declaring they were going to drag the corrected tax and fines I supposedly owed out of my hide, but I had 90 days to respond in some manner. Well, it took a while, Heartland being a busy place, but the same day I received their letterhead explanation \/ corrected 1099 form, I fired it off to the IRS. Many others would have likely begun to look into personal loans<\/a> to cover the potential costs to come, but I wasn’t one of those.<\/p>\n

IRS’s response is below, click image to enlarge, note the words in the first sentence, “we did not make any changes to the tax reported on your return<\/em>” and the words in the second sentence regarding their Notice of Deficiency, “please disregard that notice<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

\"IRS<\/a><\/p>\n

Long story short, in the words of the be-all end-all Internal Revenue service, the US agency having the authority to determine whether my grant is a gift to be taxed as gifts are taxed, or is taxable self-employment income, no changes could be made<\/strong> to my original 2013 tax return, and the case is closed: I proved to the satisfaction of the IRS that I do not work for the Heartland Institute. Now, despite whatever the letter seems to be saying in its second-to-last paragraph, the plain fact is that I do not work for anyone, nor am I self-employed, operating under any contractual or otherwise arrangement where I am paid with the expectation that I work or provide services for anybody<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It’s entertaining that I could sue folks for defamation, but as I’ve said in a few comment sections (e.g. this one<\/a>), I don’t feel defamed. When I’m branded as a crook and a liar by folks who literally cannot and will not dispute a solitary detail of what I say about the smear of skeptic climate scientists, it doesn’t harm me, it harms them<\/em> in a way that’s obvious for all to see.<\/p>\n

However, who knows what variety of tactics my critics will come up with? Since I now have the above letter to back me up, perhaps this is the appropriate time to point to something I was alerted to some time ago concerning diatribes aimed at my benefactors. I particularly draw my critics to the end of the Legal Council statement here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those critics of mine who have taken the time to read this post up to this point, and are still planning on saying I’m a paid shill of Heartland or anybody else, let me repeat that last sentence from the Legal Council statement – although it may not have been stated on my behalf, it could be something lawyers might see as being very useful for me:<\/p>\n

With this notice, the reader is informed he\/she will have no defense of “innocent mistake” made because of lack of knowledge and may have legal liability for defamation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One person has already called me “a paid propagandist working for the fossil-fuel-industry-financed Heartland Institute”. At a climate alarmist site I sometimes comment at, another person has said (full context here) Heartland pays me to “side-step, deflect, distract, obfuscate, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[136],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3450"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6249,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions\/6249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}