Washington, D.C. – Nobody trusts the IRS, and with good reason. It's too powerful. It's unaccountable. And it's staffed by bureaucrats who seemingly take pleasure in making decent, hard-working Americans squirm.
There are a lot of ways to fix that. The best of them would be to enact the flat tax proposed by Steve Forbes during his run for president. A tax return on a postcard, with everyone paying the same rate and having the same standard deduction. The next best thing would be to send a clear message to its overseers inside the U.S. Treasury that its corporate culture must change.
The best way to do that, if it's not done before the new Congress convenes in January, is for the new House of Representatives to take up and pass a measure rescinding the $80 billion the IRS got to hire new agents as part of the 2022 Biden/Schumer/Manchin Inflation Reduction Act and dare the Senate to pass it.
It's not like the IRS had a detailed plan for spending it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a written commitment about what it wouldn't do with the money but money is fungible. In any event, she was only helping the politicians who needed political cover get it so they could vote for it. If there had been a plan, Yellen could have told us all how the $80 billion would be spent instead of waiting until after it was approved to announce the formulation of internal working groups to determine how it would be spent.
Talk about putting the cart before its horse. That's not how it is supposed to work. It's like going to a bank and asking for $1 million so you can buy a house before you've met with a realtor.
All this is important once again because the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has just released a report concluding former President Donald J. Trump did not order the IRS to audit former high-ranking FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe.
The investigation was ordered after intense speculation fueled by the establishment media that these were not random and routine but were part of an effort at retaliation. The TIGTA exoneration won't be enough for some people who, hating Trump as they do will still believe that the 45th president and the people around him abused their power to go after people perceived to be political enemies.
If they had, they wouldn't be the first. FDR did it. Kennedy did it. LBJ was famous for it. Nixon, too. Even people inside the Obama administration did it but in ways that were much more sophisticated than peeking through individual tax returns.
The alleged misdeeds committed by people working for Obama inside the division of the IRS dealing with not-for-profit organizations got swept under the rug and down the memory hole. The same thing happened regarding the leak of the unredacted tax returns of people who contributed to groups that supported marriage as it existed before the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell.
No one was outed. No one was punished. No one went to jail. That's wrong. The people who work at the IRS must not be allowed to forget the infliction of reputational damage through leaks is not among the penalties they can impose if they think their reasons are righteous enough.
It matters not just because it's unfinished business dating back at least as far as the Obama administration but because it threatens to be a problem in the future. The IRS has too much power now. With the additional $80 billion, it will become an unstoppable intrusion in the lives of too many individuals, small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to build big companies out of small ones.
The IRS doesn't go after the ultra-rich. It goes after the middle class – and for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: It's where the money is. Somewhere along the line, the people who make up the permanent government decided that tax evasion and tax avoidance needed to be policed in the same ways even though they are very different things.
Tax evasion is not paying what you owe. Tax avoidance involves finding ways that are not prohibited under current law to reduce the amount of tax you owe the government. One is criminal. One is not. Increasingly, however, some lawmakers and many of the tax code enforcers who work at the IRS are looking at them the same way.
When you add that to the fact the agency has all the power in most disputes and that you have to prove your innocence if you're hauled into the U.S. Tax Court, most people probably prefer to pay what the agency says they owe than contest the results of an audit or a bill dunning them, with interest, for the amount it claims was underpaid.
No one wants to fight the IRS. That adds to its power. Which under our democratic-republican form of government, means it needs to be reined in. That's not going to happen unless members of Congress open the agency up to scrutiny.
That can happen, but only if a majority of Congress votes to make it so. Rather than spend hundreds of hours and billions of dollars investigating the Bidens – something the Trumpian voters who make up the base of the modern GOP want desperately to see happen – those resources should be poured into overseeing and investigating the federal agencies like the IRS that seem to do the most damage to household budgets and the national economy.
For those who are expecting the new GOP majority in the House to use its subpoena power like a punishing sword slicing a pound of flesh from the Bidens in retribution for the wrongs done to the Trumps by Nancy Pelosi and her gang of progressive sycophants, such a shift would be a disappointment.
For most of America though, it might come as welcome relief. The people want Congress to do their business and make their lives better or, at the very least, stop causing problems and get out of the way. Going after Hunter Biden and his alleged criminal activities, as the incoming House seems ready to do, is a matter for the U.S. Department of Justice. Congressional investigators should spend their time digging deeply into what goes on inside the IRS, exposing it and getting reforms enacted to protect the taxpayers who pay their salaries. What they uncover will likely justify any decision to rescind the $80 billion given it by Congress at the request of the Biden administration to raise revenue for the government from you and me.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Buy guns and ammo while you still can defend yourself from criminally corrupt FBLIE and P0S IRS armies that commie P0S PED0 illegitimate Joe is sending to squeeze Americans with. Make their numbers small.
One arm of the government investigating another arm of the government is like one group of rats investigating another group of rats while they’re all down in the cheese hold of the cargo ship.
Sorry, but that just ain’t gonna’ cut the cheese. We, the people, need to take our country back.
COS – Convention Of States – is gaining momentum, but needs everybody on board. It doesn’t need to cost anybody one red cent. Just your vote will do.
Check into it, because if we don’t start doing something OURSELVES, that putrid swamp in D.C. is never gonna’ get drained.
Who’s at cause for the government, the democrats, XI JINPING BIDEN AND HIS REGIME. THE WHOLE WORKS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED!!!!
Go to Biden he is the source of all destruction with in Snerica
In 2008, when Hillary Clinton was running for the Democrat nomination for President, she said something about millions of Americans being invisible to the Federal government. I e-mailed her campaign asking which form to file with the IRS to sign up. I have not received a reply.
But probe Biden influence ON Govt too
Do Both