In President Biden’s inappropriately named Inflation Reduction Bill there is a big boost in power for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The Bill includes $80 billion to hire 87,000 new agents ostensibly to track down high-income folks who are cheating on their taxes. Uh huh. Incidentally, that comes to more than $900,000 per new agent. There is a lot of room for mischief in that amount of money.
The IRS did not always exist … and maybe it should not have. You will not find the IRS enshrined in the Constitution. It was created in 1862 with the appointment of a Commissioner of Internal Revenue as part of the Treasury Department to collect a TEMPORARY income tax to finance the Civil War. True to their word, the temporary income tax — and the Commission on Internal Revenue — closed shop a decade later.
In 1913, the newly elected progressive President Woodrow Wilson brought back the income tax and the Commission – which was later renamed as the Internal Revenue Service. At the time, Democrat proponents assured the American people that the income tax would never exceed 10 percent on the richest Americans. Uh huh.
Since that time, the IRS has evolved into one of the largest and most feared of the federal agencies. It is larger than the State Department and the Justice Department combined – and that includes the FBI.
Their collection procedures are among the most severe and dangerous of any collection agency in the nation. They have the unique power to seize personal property and bank accounts at will – without a court order. Those whose property and/or money is confiscated have no effective means to object – and the ability to appeal is an entirely internal process. The appeals are often handled by the same individuals at the IRS who make the initial decisions.
Those they deem to be in arrears of the payments to Uncle Sam are subjected to exorbitant fines and penalties that quickly exceed the allegedly owed money.
The IRS monitors the bank accounts of every American. Banks are require to report legal transfers and withdrawals of money from private bank accounts upon which no taxes are due.
When tied to automatic payroll deduction, the IRS set the stage for almost unlimited taxation – and the cancerous growth of the federal bureaucracy that we see today. It is bankrolling authoritarian oppression by funding the growth of federal power – dismantling the Constitutional rights of states and the people to due process.
Go check out the Tenth Amendment if you want to understand what the Founders meant by federalism – and the inalienable rights of we the people. Oh hell … I will save you the Internet search. Here is the Tenth Amendment.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
If you think almost doubling the number of IRS agents from 90,000 to 178, 000 is just adding more accounts to the government payroll – and that is bad enough– you have not seen the IRS job application request. It tells wannabe IRS agents that they can carry guns, make arrests and even use deadly force. The IRS has since taken down that language from its website – but those are still part of the official job description.
There is actually a way to abolish the IRS. It would be a National Sales Tax – along with a constitutional amendment to abolish the income tax. (That is necessary or the reprobates in Washington will eventually reinstate the income tax over above national sales tax – making things worse than ever.)
The money would be collected by the businesses – just as they are the tax collection agents for sales and other taxes. They already collect the income tax in the form of the payroll tax. The systems and infrastructure are already in place.
Since sales taxes are regressive – in that they hit the hardest on the poor – you make the National Sales Tax somewhat progressive. That means removing the tax on medicines and essential foods and applying an excise or luxury tax on high end items.
Not only will the rich folks pay more because they purchase more – there will be no loopholes. No zeroing out the tax. And imagine a world without filing tax returns, no fines and penalties for mistakes. No audits. And one of the largest –and most expensive – agencies of government disappears. The Founders would have liked that.
Unfortunately, there is so much political money flowing to and from the tax attorneys and accountants that there is virtually no hope of ending the role of the IRS (But I can dream, can’t I). In view of the Biden legislation, the situation will only get worse – much worse — for the American people in the future.
So, there ‘tis.