We have written in this spot many times about actions one should take to keep your personal information safe online. It’s really disconcerting, however, when you could have used many best practices and still find your information being shared.

That is largely at the base of lawsuits recently filed by taxpayers against Google and Meta. These suits dig into some serious issues underlying our largely digital culture. You can read a good article from Forbes about the background to these here, but largely what it comes down to is when companies like these digital giants largely make their money off making use of digital data, then what is it appropriate for them to use and in what ways? And even if they are not actively using some information, if their actions and services possibly allow others to access information, what is their responsibility in the matter?

These types of questions can keep spinning out further and further from there. And they are important questions and ones that society will need to come to some consensus on as the fallout from new technologies continues to be observed. This, however, is not the place (and I am not the person) to try to arrive at any real answers.

Instead, however, I do want to emphasize just how many ways there are for your information to be compromised. Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t retain vigilance and use best practices when it comes to how you operate online. But it does show that even with them, nothing is foolproof, and there are still malicious actors out there.

So the warning here then is to not feel super safe. I do not want to encourage any level of paranoia, but instead, if you see something suspicious, don’t just hide from it or think that you can avoid it. There are a lot of scams out there, but not EVERYTHING is a scam.

Therefore, if you see something strange on a credit report, look into it. If you receive some information from the IRS that sounds wrong, look into it. If you receive correspondence about accounts you were not aware of, look into it. And sure, sometimes these may, in fact, be fraudulent and you can ignore them from there. But the more vigilant you are, the more you can keep these things from turning into something bigger. And as we are seeing, there are many ways out there for some of your information to potentially be grabbed, even through no fault of your own.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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The fact that it’s impossible to perfectly predict where business and consumer action will go was driven home to me this week, when I read this CNN article about how malls aren’t really going away. Granted, I think we have all seen some of these spaces be completely closed (and possibly razed), so malls probably are not on the way to reclaiming the status they had a few decades ago, but their future appears to be brightening.

One thing I found interesting in the article is the effect of new retailers moving into this space. There were anchor retailers that were in many malls, so much so that there were certain stores that seemed guaranteed to every building, but now as some of that space opens up (think Bed, Bath & Beyond), there are varied businesses willing to take up this space, and that new presence can help the entire mall feel invigorated. And the owners of buildings can also charge more rent for those newly opened spaces, making everyone happy.

If malls were once monoliths that seemed much the same no matter where you went, maybe this is an indicator that a little more individual uniqueness can help renew interest in things that seemed old. After all, it’s not as if commerce is lessening.

One thing about that commerce, though, that has been largely tied in with the downfall of malls is how much of it has moved online. And obviously this is not going away and the way it has affected brick and mortar establishments cannot be overlooked. The CNN article, however, talks about certain retailers that are operating with strategies of having physical locations be part of a larger brand that mostly revolves around their digital presence.  Malls give these businesses the opportunity to put these physical stores into already existing spaces.

A lot of what seems to be moving these existing malls incrementally forward is being new in that space and/or having new ideas on how to use that space. So really, it should not be surprising then that a lot of what is helping something that seemed like it was being aged out are new ways of thinking.

The lesson here is that there is success to be found when one doesn’t accept that the only possible answers are the already established answers. Is this a guarantee that malls will remain for the next few decades? Not necessarily, but there does seem to be enough evidence that says some new thinking is at least extending their life. So never be afraid of those new thoughts that you may have, even if the path before them is not always clear.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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Last week, I came across an article that spoke about how a startup company has gained some funding to continue its work into using AI as a way to crack down on tax evasion and financial crimes. And this clearly sounds like a good thing, and frankly encapsulates much of what I think AI should be used for – allowing it to go through a great deal of information faster than a human can. At the same time, though, I wonder if it is addressing the real problem.

After all, we all read stories about people or businesses who make great deals of money and pay a seeming pittance in taxes on it. So would such technology identify these anomalies and then only find that they are working within the system’s rules to legitimately reach its final tax numbers?

And sure, the answer to fixing that issue would be a massive tax overhaul that’s most likely impossible with our current political structure. It is one of those things that has become so complicated that it becomes extremely difficult to unravel. It can be easy to see one of these situations where a giant company pays little in taxes and think it is not right, but it is something else to find a solution to fix it that pleases everyone.

At the same time, however, there exists a tax gap between what the IRS expects it should collect in taxes and what it actually receives every year. So doing things that can help close that gap is a good thing. No matter what you feel a government should be spending its money on, it is easier to agree that it is difficult to budget well when you aren’t getting all expected income.

This then lands us at this interesting point we exist in now when it comes to AI. It is certainly not going to get us to a place where we are going to see clear ways to a better tax system writ large, but maybe it can help the one we are in work better. And as the AI being used gets better, receives tweaks to help it hopefully find more issues in less time, maybe evading the actual rules will become more difficult. And maybe once that happens, it will help those who decide questions about the tax system gain some more clarity about how it works.

Or maybe that’s an optimistic pipedream. At least this seems an innovative way to use a new technology, though, that is getting enough money to see what it can do.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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​Sometimes you hear news that can pull you in two different directions. This happened to me last week when the IRS announced it is pushing some paperless initiatives. In one direction, it is great that the agency is moving forward with increasing access and speed while adapting to how more people are carrying out correspondence and business. The pull in the other direction is wondering how this could have taken so long. I mean, for how many years have you received notices from just about everyone you pay money to that they would prefer it if you went paperless?

And the more you look into this, the more it seems like the IRS is far behind the times. As part of the paperless push, they are committing to digitally process 100% of tax and information returns submitted by paper in the 2025 filing season. Yes, that means they are not currently doing it. Yes, that means they also don’t think they can get this in place by next year. To me, it doesn’t sound like this would take more than a nominal technological investment. So if this feels backward to you, I think it should.

This should only feel like new technology to very few people. But it goes even beyond that for the IRS, which spent multiple years working on a backlog of paper returns caused by decreased in-person staffing in actual mail-receiving offices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now I suppose one could argue that dealing with the backlog before making any sweeping changes made sense, but there seems to also be a very valid argument that increased digital acceptance could have gone a long way to keep the backlog from growing and shortening how long it took to work through it.

Beyond that, the agency currently stores over a billion historical documents on paper, which sounds like a lot, but can easily be reached when one thinks about how many millions of taxpayers out there. The storing of these documents, though, costs more than $40 million/year, which sounds like pretty steep rent, though, if you ask me.

But again, this push-and-pull dynamic does include some positives, too, and the fact that the IRS is committing to make this change does (finally) make sense and is a good thing. We can shake our heads at the timing, but at least it is happening. Because in much the same vein, no one wants to buy stamps either, when answering anybody for anything.

​Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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