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Hangman's Wages!!! State of Missouri in trouble with the IRS over payments to executioners
From Missourinet.com: Missouri Corrections chief: Execution team members don't get IRS forms:
Contractors and those who pay them are supposed to file a 1099 with the IRS, so that it can make sure they’re paying taxes on their earnings. The Department pays members of its execution team with cash to hide their identities. Director George Lombardi told a House budget committee the department hasn’t issued 1099s to execution team members since the admistration of Governor John Ashcroft.
“Because of the issue of anonymity, to give 1099s to these individuals would in fact reveal who they were, and that would end the death penalty, essentially, because they wouldn’t do it,” Lombardi said.
From Buzzfeed: Missouri Paid Executioners $250,000 in Cash, Possibly Violating Tax Law:
Shortly before each execution in Missouri, a high-ranking corrections official takes envelopes filled with thousands of dollars in cash to the state’s executioners. The cash limits the paper trail — and helps keep the identities of the executioners hidden.
Most of the envelopes are filled with hundred-dollar bills. And on the outside, the envelopes carry instructions: They aren’t to be opened until “completion of services rendered.”
The executioners are given pseudonyms to protect their identities: M2, the nurse, gets $2,400, while M3, the anesthesiologist, gets the envelope marked $3,000. M7, the drug supplier, gets the most, an envelope filled with $7,178.88.
Missouri Director of Adult Institutions David Dormire has handed out nearly a hundred envelopes filled with cash since November 2013. Over that span of time, Dormire delivered $284,551.84 in cash to the small group of individuals who help the state carry out the death penalty, according to a BuzzFeed News review of receipts, an audit of the payments, a spreadsheet showing cash withdrawals, and memos marked “confidential” in which the payments were discussed.
The crux of the matter is: without 1099 forms, the IRS cannot be sure if they're getting their cut from Missouri's Blood Money.
Wouldn't it be the irony of ironies if the death penalty, at least in Missouri, came to an end because the executioners had to reveal their identities on a 1099?
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Hangman at Home
by Carl Sandburg
WHAT does the hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day’s work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and talk about
The weather, base ball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here’s
A rope—does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It’s a good and dandy world we live
In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair—the hangman—
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess.
(Anything but paying taxes & breaking his anonymity. ~ Journeyman)
