By Stacie Clifford Kitts, CPA

Today I received an upsetting tweet from a tweeter @eZeetax.  Mr. eZeetax stated the following:

“you are copying and pasting IRS newsletter without even linking to the original article. Major FAIL.”

Although I mention on my About Stacie’s More Tax Tips home page that besides original commentary and tax information, I also post information directly from the IRS, I thought it might be a good idea to explain in more detail to people such as @eZeetax how this site works.

I’m no journalism expert, but I get the whole credit your source thing.  Here are my observations – for what they are worth. 

When a website picks up an article that has been released by a news service, they will for the most part cite the source including the author of the article.  For example if a website picks up an Associated Press article, they will show that by placing “AP” before the first line of the article.  There may even be a link back to an author’s website, as in this example of a post by CNN from a Frisky author, where CNN is linking to the Frisky website [but not necessarily back to that particular article]. 

Although I do not link back to the IRS’s website on each post written by an IRS author, I do link back to the IRS on my site.  I do not consider that to be a major “fail” as indicated by @eZeetax. To be clear, I only do this with IRS posts.  I never repost something written by another blogger or journalist without indicating a proper cite and link.  When posting something written by the IRS be it Tax Tips or News Releases, I always indicate that the article is from the IRS either in the body of the post or in the title.  I never take credit for an article that I do not write.  For example, a post titled “The IRS Presents,” indicates that – duh, the IRS presents this information.  If I have written an article, it will include By Stacie Clifford Kitts, CPA at the top of the page. 

The idea of Stacie’s More Tax Tips is to provide information that I think is helpful to taxpayers.  And really, that is all that I am trying to do.   I sure do hope that I am not “failing” in my attempt to accomplish this goal.

If you are a reader of Stacie’s More Tax Tips and you believe that my IRS posts are a “Major FAIL”, I would like to hear back from you.  If my readership feels I need to be more specific in my posting of IRS information, then I am happy to do so.  Of course, if you think this whole thing is “no big deal” – or my posts are more like a Major WIN, then I would like to hear that as well.

Thanks for reading!

Stacie