Author Topic: How to answer the IRS  (Read 1351 times)

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Offline happyg

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How to answer the IRS
« on: May 27, 2013, 09:52:33 pm »
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/27/how-to-answer-the-irs/

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated IRS rules and regulations.” – Lois Lerner

Herewith, the former director of the Internal Revenue Service’s exempt-organizations division, now enjoying fully paid administrative leave at taxpayer expense, provided the perfect template for responding to her erstwhile agency. To wit, the next time the IRS contacts you with questions, just quote Lois Lerner.

This was, of course, part of the abortive account Ms. Lerner gave to Rep. Darrell Issa’s committee as it investigated abusive and improper treatment of conservative groups by the IRS. But in saying little, Ms. Lerner spoke volumes.

It is a funny thing, the urgency and insistence with which the IRS demands particulars of citizens. We are expected to respond promptly to them — yet they decline to answer to taxpayers. The richest bit of all, of course, is they work for us, despite their misapprehensions to the contrary.

Ms. Lerner’s testimony — to the extent her self-serving opening statement, followed by a contemptible refusal to answer questions, can be classified as such — was only one part of the parade of horribles that has passed before Congress. Former IRS Commissioners Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller were utterly reptilian in their committee appearances and, for America, the spectacle should be instructive.

Have a look at these people, all of them. See their smug, superior expressions, witness their imperious attitude, hear their unctuous words. These are individuals drunk on administrative authority no one voted them, intoxicated by petty power, and made to feel invincible by bureaucratic anonymity. In short, this is your tax department at work.

And perfectly consistent with the new administrative state, those who fail or misbehave are rewarded. Beyond Ms. Lerner’s paid, indefinite vacation, Sarah Hall Ingram, who was commissioner for the IRS’ tax-exempt division while it targeted tea party groups, has received over $100,000 in bonuses and been placed in charge of Obamacare enforcement.

Put another way, the well-paid, unelected, formerly unknown bureaucrat who, despite working in the tax department, somehow became the arbiter of free speech, will now be in charge of scrutinizing your health care. Incidentally, if you think you can guess what such a person would look like, you’re right.

This column has advocated abolishing the IRS and, thanks to this recent imbroglio, one no longer requires a tri-corner hat and Gadsden flag to advance this policy position. This may be, as many have suggested, the most damaging of the scandals currently facing the Obama administration. But Obama will never face the voters again. What is much more significant is that politically uninvolved people, who heretofore had only a vague notion of the IRS as a necessary evil or a punch line, are coming to comprehend that the system is rotten and should be changed.

A shift is occurring. People can see that a necessary evil might be just evil, or at least illegitimate, such that its demands do not carry their previous heft. If and when I hear from the IRS, will it be because I published this column? Or you, gentle reader, will you receive an unpleasant missive because you read or circulated it? We cannot know, and therein lay the insoluble problem of legitimacy.

It’s not even a matter of being high-profile or important (you very well may be, though I most certainly am not). An automated system or assigned civil servant (to the extent there is a difference nowadays) could easily track and store information on inconvenient people, matching names for audits and inquiries. Considering the revelations of the past several weeks, does such a process seem far-fetched?

So again, let us abolish the IRS. The institution was never liked, but plainly it cannot be trusted, either, and one is desolate to conceive of a scenario in which its legitimacy is regained.

No matter how straightforward and sensible an idea, any idea, there are always cranks and contrarians who find some reason to be opposed (Chuck Schumer, please call your office).

In this case, it would be interesting to hear from disinterested defenders of the status quo. Is there anyone out there who can seriously contend that the United States, ostensibly the greatest nation on Earth, cannot come up with a better system to fund its government?

This is a legitimate question. Do you really believe the IRS is the best we can do, and will you defend its continued existence? You are cordially invited to respond.

Meanwhile, if the IRS comes calling, just tell them what Lois Lerner said.

Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: How to answer the IRS
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2013, 11:26:14 pm »
If we are to "abolish the IRS," what will it be replaced with? The Internal Revenue Service is a central tenet of the government system: it pays the bills. It is responsible for bringing in the money that pays servicemen, employees, grants, Congressmen, those who receive entitlements, and quite literally everything else. Without something resembling an IRS, the United States of America ceases to exist.

Could we, in theory, abolish the current IRS? Sure. The tax code has become a boondoggle, a massive maze of regulations, loopholes, credits and surcharges that it is practically unmanageable in its current form. However, we cannot simply go without revenue collection or without taxes, contrary to what the 47% believe.

Whatever system eventually gets adopted must be uniform, with loopholes and credits kept to a bare minimum. It should NEVER be allowed to use its power for social engineering or coercion, even if that means a Constitutional amendment to do so. (It shouldn't... after all, it is bribery, an impeachable offense in the Constitution, and SCOTUS did in the 1800s rule that the power to tax is the power to destroy, but later SCOTUSes, Roberts chief among them, have thrown that out the window.) It must also be accompanied by a blunt reassessment of what we Americans expect out of government and a dramatic cut in spending, and yes, that includes entitlements. I can assure you, though, the IRS must exist. It is necessary, and proper, if the rules for its existence do not encourage the type of selective headhunting that has been used here.
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Oceander

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Re: How to answer the IRS
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2013, 12:53:31 am »
If we are to "abolish the IRS," what will it be replaced with? The Internal Revenue Service is a central tenet of the government system: it pays the bills. It is responsible for bringing in the money that pays servicemen, employees, grants, Congressmen, those who receive entitlements, and quite literally everything else. Without something resembling an IRS, the United States of America ceases to exist.

Could we, in theory, abolish the current IRS? Sure. The tax code has become a boondoggle, a massive maze of regulations, loopholes, credits and surcharges that it is practically unmanageable in its current form. However, we cannot simply go without revenue collection or without taxes, contrary to what the 47% believe.

Whatever system eventually gets adopted must be uniform, with loopholes and credits kept to a bare minimum. It should NEVER be allowed to use its power for social engineering or coercion, even if that means a Constitutional amendment to do so. (It shouldn't... after all, it is bribery, an impeachable offense in the Constitution, and SCOTUS did in the 1800s rule that the power to tax is the power to destroy, but later SCOTUSes, Roberts chief among them, have thrown that out the window.) It must also be accompanied by a blunt reassessment of what we Americans expect out of government and a dramatic cut in spending, and yes, that includes entitlements. I can assure you, though, the IRS must exist. It is necessary, and proper, if the rules for its existence do not encourage the type of selective headhunting that has been used here.

Therein lies the central problem.  This is another variation on the "who will watch the watchers" problem.  The Founders attempted to deal with it by weakening the central government, both by restricting it to exercising only enumerated powers and by separating the legislative, executive, and judicial powers and setting them up so that they cross-checked each other.  In short, the Founders opted to use friction and inefficiency as the means to put sand in the wheels of government.  And it generally worked. 

However, statists and collectivists - those who have a thirst for exercising force against their neighbors with impunity - found ways around those limits.  Whether nominally "right wing" or "left wing" they have slowly chipped away at the built-in ineficiencies.  For example, although clothed in the pretty language of democracy, the 17th Amendment was a serious mistake because it removed one of the cross-checks the Founders intentionally built into the Constitution.

The watershed, however, was the reign - for that is what it was - of FDR.  It was during those ill-fated years that the Supreme Court was essentially bullied into granting the federal government effectively unlimited power by giving very wide latitude to Congress' own interpretation of its powers and, in particular, permitting the federal government to use the Commerce Clause as an excuse to do almost anything it wanted.  FDR took that power and ran with it, almost single-handedly inventing Hobbes' Leviathan - the all-powerful administrative state, aka the "nanny" state - that we are saddled with today.

At bottom, though, the source of the problem was political:  primarily leftists (FDR was a self-admitted "left of center" kind of fascist) creating crises - FDR created the Great Depression inasmuch as his policies turned a run-of-the-mill recession into a depression - and misleading people into believing that giving the federal government more and more power - in the name of "the people" - would solve all of the problems that beset them.

Just as the source of the problem is political, so too is the solution.  Now that we've got almost 100 years of experience under the all-encompassing administrative estate, it's time to have a serious political discussion about whether it's a worthwhile form of government.  Those who oppose it can win only if they can convince a majority of their fellow citizens that the direction of future growth lies away from the administrative state, not toward it.

Under present circumstances I'm not sure if that can be accomplished short of having the country as it is now die, hopefully to be reborn from its own ashes like the phoenix.




« Last Edit: May 28, 2013, 12:53:52 am by Oceander »

Offline mountaineer

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Re: How to answer the IRS
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2013, 01:36:15 am »
Somehow, we paid the bills before there was a federal income tax or IRS.
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Offline Rapunzel

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Re: How to answer the IRS
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2013, 01:45:24 am »
Somehow, we paid the bills before there was a federal income tax or IRS.

exactly.... 
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Offline Ford289HiPo

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Re: How to answer the IRS
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2013, 03:49:29 am »
Somehow, we paid the bills before there was a federal income tax or IRS.

 goopo
I wonder when the lies will stop and truth begin, even as grim as the truth may be. And then I remember that for 70 years, the reign of terror in Russia called itself "the people's government." We have so far to fall, yet we are falling fast and Hell yawns to receive us.