That's because the securities losses took place from 2018-2020. But there are plenty of allegations regarding more recent years such as FSD deferred revenue, DMV enforcement actions, AR/AP, tax evasion, silencing critics, etc.
I've been getting an enormous amount of right-wing political spam lately (which continues today). I made a video about tracing its origin. I wonder if your text messages are in any way related. Monument & Cathedral seems to be pursuing multi-modal communications, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have an active SMS campaign.
You have it backwards. You have to be able to make the request at the offices in the first place. This is about OpenAI attempting to prevent an in-person request from being made, in violation of the law. No one was "invading" anything.
Other prominent non-profits do not seem to have this problem.
Okay but if the non-profit doesn't comply, again does that mean the person (who I guess I said was "invading") gets to start yelling and doesn't have to leave if asked to do so?
Anyone has a right to make a request of this type in person. Under the First Amendment and 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)(1)(B), that means you have a right to stay as long as necessary to make the request for public records.
The only ones yelling were OpenAI employees and the company's security contractor(s).
This isn't quite right. Federal law requires that citizens be allowed to make requests in person. Trespassing is a state statute in each state. In general, federal law supersedes state law. Asking to see a non-profit's public records in person is not trespassing because it's expressly authorized by law.
That is unfortunately not how the law works. I am not a lawyer, but I have studied this a bit in passing. It's important to understand the interplay between the scope of the law, private property rights and also reasonableness. Although 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)(1)(B) mandates that the documents be available for inspection and copying upon request, it does not say anything about allowing civilians to remain on the property beyond the reasonable scope of inspecting these documents. Generally, laws are interpreted in the context of what's reasonable. It's unreasonable to interpret 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)(1)(B) as allowing someone to stay on private property indefinitely. If they don't have the documents available, and ask you to leave, private property rights apply here and you must leave. The penalty you can seek for non-compliance clearly defined as a $20/day fine, not that you can continue to stay on the property and repeatedly ask for something they do not have a day before a holiday. The Supremacy Clause does not apply here, because there's no inherent conflict. The federal law does not explicitly (or implicitly) state that you can stay on the property after asked to leave, and thus it cannot trump state law. The fact that the initial presence on the property was for a legal, civil purpose does not provide ongoing protection from criminal trespass charges if an individual overstays their welcome or refuses to leave when asked.
Happy to look at any legal citations to caselaw you have. But generally there's a difference between "stay[ing]" a prolonged period of time and being able to even get in the door to make the request in the first place, which is explicitly allowed by federal law. And the documents were available.
Right, but the penalty for non compliance here is a $20/day fine. No where does the law state that you're granted license to enter the building if they refuse you entry or deny your request. You made your request, they refused and asked you to leave. Your only valid recourse here is to file a complaint with the IRS and let them do their thing. Alternatively return after the holiday break when the office has the staff there that can fulfill your request.
Ironically, we don't know what the penalty for non-compliance is because we don't know the non-profit's gross receipts are for its most recent complete tax year. If they are over $1 million, which is plausible, the daily penalty is $100/day not to exceed $50,000. See 2022 Form 990 Instructions, page 81. Not that this really matters.
The crux of our disagreement is whether they have the right to refuse entry. They can [unlawfully] deny a request I suppose and just choose penalties over compliance, but when it comes to denying the ability to lodge a request in person with the associated "immediate" timeline, there are First Amendment interests at stake and I think the federal constitution, if not federal preemption, wins.
In this specific instance, it wasn't clear to me what, if anything, the security guard had done or intended to do with my name and ID information (which is not needed to file a request for tax forms). So I didn't feel as though a specific request had even been filed. He wouldn't provide his name, he wouldn't allow me to speak to anyone with any knowledge of the issue, and I had nothing in writing. From my perspective, OpenAI prevented a request from being filed after its accountants said that they had the documents but that the non-profit's offices were the proper place to lodge a request.
On top of all of that, the 2022 IRS Form 990 instructions (page 79) refer to "the room" and the requirement that the member of the public "must" be allowed to "take notes freely." Outside on the sidewalk is not a room where you can take notes.
"Write to IRS EO Classification, Mail Code 4910, 1100 Commerce Street, Dallas, TX 75242. Your letter should provide the name and address of the organization that refuses to allow public inspection or provide copies of its documents, and request that the documents be made available for public inspection.
"The Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division of the IRS will contact the organization and arrange a time during which the documents may be inspected. If the organization fails to provide the documents at the agreed upon time, statutory penalties may be assessed.
The IRS documentation also says to ask the "responsible person" so if someone approached the public office with the intention of interacting with the responsible person and they were unavailable, and the person spoken with essentially "took a message" how does that not basically conclude the submission of the request?
I also infer that the clock starts upon the scheduled viewing, not automatically once the request was made, but I could be missing a nuance.[1] Specifically, " Timely Response to Requests".
INAL but this really doesn't pass a sniff test, same with what the journalist is saying. If the people are gone they're gone. If you show up to a company at 1am on Christmas morning do you have a legal right to immediately get access to those records and enter the property? I would presume that there has to be a reasonable expectation. Now if this was Wednesday last week, the complaint sounds much more legitimate. Or if he's been trying several days and they told him "person will be back x date" and he comes back x date, yeah. But I'd actually be pretty upset if the legal system allowed unreasonable requests. Absolutely shady stuff is going down in OpenAI and I can absolutely understand fear that things will change as they get more time, but the consequences of unreasonable requests results in far more harm than any one company can do. Unless you're ultra Xrisk and think they're going to release paperclipping AI imminently. But then break in, get the proof, sort out the law later. You get that proof and you bet you'll have a lot of free money showing up for legal defense and a very sympathetic court who is going to learn about Jury Nullification. But if it's just about taxes? Chill. But again, not a lawyer and definitely don't know any law. This just does not sound right. It just sounds so much easier to get the video of them denying and take them to court and make them prove they had no one to give him the documents.
Accounting firm acknowledged it could send the documents by e-mail but refused on the phone, said to go to the company's office.
Company wouldn't let me in the office, blamed Thanksgiving, and lied about the office being closed when it obviously was not.
We're talking about sending an e-mail with a PDF in the middle of a business day when employees were clearly at work in the office. That's it. E-mail can be sent from anywhere in the world. And the accounting firm was willing and able to send it, just not willing to comply with the law because its client said not to.
I don’t think it was obviously open - Just because it was staffed doesn’t mean it was a regular work day.
You’d have to read the law very closely but as someone who has had a trespassing ticket and even went to court, you will likely find no sympathy nor cure by trespassing, nor would the average cop care. I would not be surprised if the doorman telling you to fuck off was good enough to count as a refusal to provide documents, which would help your case down the road but would automatically place you trespassing
