Conspiracy Theory Time: ObamaCare to Track Gold Purchases

This isn't some theory based on shaky facts. This was put into the Health Care Bill at the 11th hour.

Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals.

Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change.

So that means if you own your own business and are socking some money away in gold just in case things go bad the government wants to make sure they tax you. The conspiracy theory idea comes from the idea that $600 is so low which means just about every gold transaction would be flagged. So they could add a little dossier about "survivalist types" that are squirreling away gold and do something nefarious. They can sell that knowledge to shady international bankers for whatever schemes they have.

The really bad part is that suddenly small businesses have another added layer of reporting that they have to do for pretty much no reason. So the payment to your accountant or your attorney, the new laptop you bought for the intern, or that new postage meter will suddenly have to be tracked by the IRS. All this extra reporting won't be free. Some 1099s would read like phone books depending on what sort of business you own and how many $600+ purchases you need to do in order to get your business to run profitably.

Also why does the IRS need to know this stuff in the first place? It seems they just want to make an extra $17 billion in income taxes over 10 years. This comes at the cost of $10s of billions more in wasted time and extra man-hours that it would take to comply with this asinine new 1099. The sooner the Supreme Court strikes this monstrosity down the better life will be.