Question of the day: Should the IRS be looking at your Facebook, eBay, Twitter, Paypal pages/transactions and emails to see if you are cheating on your tax returns? Example – you post photos of your latest ten-day Hawaiian vacation but claim virtual poverty on your tax return. Fraud – maybe not but enough to warrant a ‘letter audit’ asking for clarification.
The IRS plans to combine this tax reporting information with data from social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook and other popular websites such as eBay.
It might even read your email. The IRS’s audit manual says that its agents can read emails that have been stored by an Internet storage provider for more than 180 days without obtaining a warrant. The manual says Internet users don’t “have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.”
via IRS mining eBay, Facebook, emails to catch cheaters | Inman News.