Have you ever checked into a business because you were there even if you did not buy anything? Have you ever gone to a business and not checked in even though you were buying something? I have done both. The number of people that check-in at a business has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of sales that business is on the hook to pay taxes for. One person might check in to Starbucks every morning as they purchase $50 worth of coffee and pasteries for their office. Another person might check in every morning when they buy their $2 double shot. Another person may go every morning yet check in only from time to time. There is no way this could be calculated to the accuracy that (dear god I hope) the IRS is held to.
You say that this could be yet another datapoint for the IRS to collect taxes with.
The example you use has the number of Foursquare (and I'm sure Facebook) checkins within the statistical amount of noise for the actual number of people who visit the venue.
The example you give in this thread is a corporation who undoubtably has a team of dozens if not hundreds of tax attorneys on staff to ensure that the company pays exactly the amount of tax they owe, at the federal state and local levels, and not one cent more or less.
But let's take it a step further, and say that Joe's Ajax Factory in East Blogentry, California is skimming off the register. Okay-- so now you need some city clerk in East Blogentry to run this magical data analysis software which says Joe isn't putting enough into the city coffers?
Again-- this is a laughable idea. Even if the software were completely accurate (which is impossible) and admissible for a local tax audit (which it wouldn't be), and the amount of local taxes that you recouped were more than the TCO of this software (which it wouldn't be), you're assuming that the unscrupulous store owner (undoubtably laundering money a la Office Space) would just sit back and take it?
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Probably the majority of those check-ins happened in the past year. Also, look at a Starbucks near where I live:
https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/explore#req=venues/49f...
Over 10k check-ins, and I doubt it has 2 million visitors per year.
Please elaborate on why you believe this is a laughable idea just from a numerical standpoint.
Have you ever checked into a business because you were there even if you did not buy anything? Have you ever gone to a business and not checked in even though you were buying something? I have done both. The number of people that check-in at a business has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of sales that business is on the hook to pay taxes for. One person might check in to Starbucks every morning as they purchase $50 worth of coffee and pasteries for their office. Another person might check in every morning when they buy their $2 double shot. Another person may go every morning yet check in only from time to time. There is no way this could be calculated to the accuracy that (dear god I hope) the IRS is held to.
OMFG Starbucks reported $3B in revenue this past quarter, but this store only has 10k checkins! Send in the G-Men, they must be laundering money!
Come on, seriously.
That's nonsense. There are 20k Starbucks in the world, this is one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks
Congratulations on completely missing my point.
You say that this could be yet another datapoint for the IRS to collect taxes with.
The example you use has the number of Foursquare (and I'm sure Facebook) checkins within the statistical amount of noise for the actual number of people who visit the venue.
The example you give in this thread is a corporation who undoubtably has a team of dozens if not hundreds of tax attorneys on staff to ensure that the company pays exactly the amount of tax they owe, at the federal state and local levels, and not one cent more or less.
But let's take it a step further, and say that Joe's Ajax Factory in East Blogentry, California is skimming off the register. Okay-- so now you need some city clerk in East Blogentry to run this magical data analysis software which says Joe isn't putting enough into the city coffers?
Again-- this is a laughable idea. Even if the software were completely accurate (which is impossible) and admissible for a local tax audit (which it wouldn't be), and the amount of local taxes that you recouped were more than the TCO of this software (which it wouldn't be), you're assuming that the unscrupulous store owner (undoubtably laundering money a la Office Space) would just sit back and take it?