By law, married persons who file joint tax returns are each fully responsible for the accuracy of the tax return and for the full tax liability. This is true even though only one taxpayer may have earned the wages or income shown on the tax return. Under the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) Innocent Spouse Program, IRS can relieve taxpayers of tax debts on the basis of equity considerations, such as not knowing that their spouse failed to pay taxes due. Since passage of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act (Restructuring Act) of 1998, IRS has received thousands of requests from taxpayers for innocent spouse relief. IRSs inability to provide timely responses to such requests has generated concerns among taxpayers, Congress, and other stakeholders. It took IRS about a year, on average, to completely process an innocent spouse case in fiscal year 2001.

Tax Administration: IRS's Innocent Spouse Program Performance Improved; Balanced Performance Measures Needed

Workplace injuries are common, avoidable, and unacceptable. The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada reveals how employers and governments engage in ineffective injury prevention efforts, intervening only when necessary to maintain standard legitimacy. Barnetson sheds light on this faulty system, highlighting the way in which employers create dangerous work environments yet pour billions of dollars into compensation and treatment. Examining this dynamic clarifies the way in which production costs are passed on to workers in the form of workplace injuries.

All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data-such as phone records or Web sites visited-should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of privacy be given a meaningful form of redress. Two specific technologies are examined: data mining and behavioral surveillance. Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.