Re: what is magnetic media

The word "electronic" does appear in the title of the paragraph of the law signed a couple of Friday's ago. The word "electronic" does NOT appear in the title of IRC Section 6011. The title of subsection (e) of Section 6011 is, "Regulations Requiring Returns on Magnetic Media, Etc.?". Section 6011(e)(1) specifies "magnetic media or in other machine-readable form" for filing. Section 6011(e)(3) specifies only "magnetic media."

Yes, it is stupid. However, since this provision goes into effect for returns filed "after December 31, 2010" Congress is likely to conclude they have until then to do their remediation without adversely affecting anyone.

Cash would be the preferred medium I think, since any recouping of business expenses results in taxable income, even though it might date back to days of proprietorship.

After posting I checked further, and rememberd a few old 5 1/4 inch diskettes upstairs, also, along with the 1978 model of Radio Shack Model I computer (section 179 in 1978!) However it is missing one critical piece of equipment the storage device which was a Radio Shack tape player! Anyone remember that?

ChEAr$, Harlan

(snipped....

If I read you right, you are saying that congress actually consulted IRS before writing the bill? Zounds! (grin

ChEAr$, Harlan

I have NO doubt!

ChEAr$, Harlan Lunsford, EA n LA

And do you realize you just used an IRS oxymoron?

ChEAr$, Harlan

More likely the IRS anticipated the stupidity that Congress wrought.

I had a Radio Shack movel 3 in 1980 or '81. There was no tape player, though - it had two floppy drives for 5 1/4 disks. It had a whole 48k of RAM.

That's why I said it does not appear in the TEXT of the section. Section titles are not statutes.

I'd still like to see someone walk into an IRS office with a box full of floppy disks attempting to "file" them, and see what the IRS CSRs do when they challenge that and are presented with the statute as it's written now.

I used to have the Radio Shack TRS-80 ["trash-80"] from 1978. The base model came with 4K of memory, and used BASIC. I upgraded it to 16K of memory, for several hundred dollars! It had a black and yellow 12 inch screen and 'programs' were on the cassette tape player (no discs, hard or soft). A few years ago I tried and couldn't even give it away to the local Radio Shack stores for 'advertising' in their windows, and it went the way of all computer flesh.

old guy

No, but they can be used to devine the intent of Congress.

Well, he'd better do so in compliance with treasury regs. Remember the statute does not itself require either magnetic or electronic filing. It mandates the treasury to issue regulations to required it.

I read they're now supporting XML for "modernized e-filing" file format; that's a somewhat recent technology ;-)

-Mark Bole

Among several around the country, one mature museum dedicated to old computing technology is in Silicon Valley, I enjoyed a visit some 3 or 4 years ago:

(sorry Harlan if there is a problem with the NY Times...)

Now we just need a Museum of Tax History (one beyond this newsgroup, that is).

-Mark Bole

Yer all correct, the service has the ability to read in data in a variety of formats, in the end downwardly formating it to be assimulated into the

1960's error Business & Individual master files, which ~some day~ will be retired when CADE fully takes over all operations, currently it runs in tandem with the old technology.