The more punitive a tax collection system becomes, the more it is allowed to intrude into the citizen's life, causing him expense, bother, inconvenience, fear and consternation -- the more likely it is to be used as a tool of political intimidation.
Marcus Owens, the IRS official who oversees the auditing of tax-exempt organizations, contends any IRS auditors making politically motivated rulings "would lose their jobs and perhaps wind up with deeper legal problems."
But this is casuistry. Attack dogs do not bite or maul out of "political motivation." But their handlers are perfectly free to direct their attention solely to members of one political faction, if they so desire.
The IRS insists to The Associated Press that "fewer than 1 percent" of the 6,000 to 10,000 audits of tax-exempt groups it conducts each year originate with "sic 'em" orders from members of Congress or the White House. But this is a carefully structured non-denial, about as reassuring as if an armed robber assured us he had held up "fewer than 1 percent" of the thousands of stores listed in his local yellow pages.
In fact, congressmen make no bones about the way the punitive IRS audit system works. Former Rep. David Skaggs, D-Colo., told the AP he referred two conservative organizations to the IRS in 1996 to achieve some "evenhandedness" after House Republicans began a "very concerted assault" through the IRS on his favorite liberal, tax-exempt groups.
Skaggs forwarded newspaper reports on the Heritage Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste to the IRS, urging a probe to determine whether the groups were advocating and working directly for the election of presidential candidate Bob Dole -- an activity which could have jeopardized their tax-exempt status, resulting in huge retroactive tax levies.
"Within two months of Skaggs' request, both groups found themselves undergoing costly audits that continue today," The AP reported this week.
John Von Kannon, vice president and treasurer of the Heritage Foundation, attributes his organization's IRS audit to purely political motives, reporting it has cost the conservative think tank $100,000 to date.
"It would be incredible to suggest, and I won't, that there was not a political dimension to these things," former Rep. Skaggs acknowledges. "Of course there is."
When the Landmark Legal Foundation sued the IRS to gain access to requests for audits, the trail of political influence was unmistakable.
"The documents show there's a systematic effort by Congress and the White House to intimidate and silence organizations with whom they disagree" -- including a conservative organization that relentlessly pursued the theory that presidential aide Vince Foster was murdered -- reports Mark Levin, head of the legal foundation.
The documents obtained by Landmark show that IRS officials highlight the origins of such audit requests. The IRS computer tracking system in Washington clearly denotes the name of the politician who referred the matter. The original letter from the White House or the member of Congress is then forwarded directly to the case agent. And lawmakers' audit requests are stamped "expedite" to remind IRS case workers they must reply in writing within 15 days.
Gosh, with double-blind safeguards like that, why on earth would we expect the IRS to go after designated political enemies like a pack of ferrets on diet pills?
This is the point at which it's traditional to call for new hearings, new regulations, and renewed reform. While we're at it, let's issue new orders that pigs shall never again roll in the mud.
In 1988, Congress prohibited the IRS from evaluating its employees on the basis of additional taxes collected. The IRS swore up and down it had no such audit quotas -- until the Review-Journal published the IRS documents with the precise dollar figures pencilled in, showing that auditors in the San Francisco region were expected to assess at least $1,012 in additional taxes for each hour they spent hectoring tearful taxpayers.
And "any auditor who failed to achieve that goal could lose cash bonuses or promotions," reported investigator and author James Bovard in his 1998 article "The IRS, Now and Forever."
"Eight decades of amendments and accretions to the Code have produced a virtually impenetrable maze," admitted Shirley D. Peterson, former Commissioner of the IRS, when she spoke at Southern Methodist University in April of 1993. "The rules are unintelligible to most citizens -- including those who hold advanced degrees and including many who specialize in tax law. The rules are equally mysterious to many government employees who are charged with administering and enforcing the law. ... Judges and lawyers admittedly do not know the tax laws," the nation's former top tax extractor herself admitted.
"It is an illusion that better laws will solve the problems of an agency that is long notorious for breaking any and all laws," concludes Mr. Bovard, author of the new book "Freedom in Chains." "The only truly effective reform is to shut down the IRS and get rid of the Byzantine tax code designed to allow politicians and bureaucrats to micro-manage the lives of American citizens."
Indeed, the time has come to get rid of the IRS and the complex, corrupt, punitive tax code it enforces. And no, I do not mean hanging some new name on the front of the buildings.
Lay them off. Send them all home. And replace the income tax with ... nothing.
Excise taxes and other federal revenues would still support a federal government of at least one third the size we have today -- which would (start ital)still(end ital) be more than three time as large as any envisioned or authorized by the framers of the United States Constitution, a blueprint for a sharply limited central government which each and every current member of Congress has already sworn a sacred oath to protect and defend.
Shut down the IRS. Do it now.
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is author of the new book "Send in the Waco Killers."
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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