The IRS: As Outrageous as the Federal Reserve
By James T. Moore (09/10/07)
The actions and activities of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has lately come under a lot of fire. And it couldn’t happen at a better time, or to a shiftier bunch of folks.
The IRS was whelped in 1912 when Congress passed a bill for individuals to provide revenue for the government. It was sneaked in at Christmastime when most congressmen were home decorating their tree, drinking laced eggnog, and not there to oppose it.
The IRS, then and now, operates on the assumption that a person is guilty until proven innocent—-a crass violation of individual rights, if anything is. And it’s history of violations didn’t begin yesterday.
In 1968, the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed that the IRS has opened personal mail, tapped phones, threatened reputations, and defied court orders. The General Accounting Office tried to break the IRS lock on secrecy but the IRS laughed it off. One staff director of the committee said, “The IRS has become almost a national scandal.” No one could fathom why he said “almost.”
In 1975, the IRS had 75,000 employees and a budget of $1-billion dollars. If the reality of that kind of money escapes you, try this: if you spent $1,000 a day, every day since Christ was born, you still would not have spent $1-billion dollars.
Now, lest you think the IRS has become less hostile and more prudent in 25 years, here is the 1999 version, with some comparisons: The Declaration of Independence is 1,377 words. The Holy Bible is 773,000 words. But the tax law has grown from 11,000 to 7-million words. Even the easiest tax form to fill out, the 1040-E, is 33 pages of fine print. The IRS sends out eight million of these forms each year--- that many, if laid end to end, would stretch 28 times around the world!
Nearly 330,000 trees are cut down annually to produce the paper the IRS uses. That should give you pause, and the EPA heartburn.
The IRS employs 114,000 people; twice as many as the CIA, and five times as many as the FBI. Americans spend $200 billion dollars and five billion hours working on their tax forms. That’s more than it takes to produce every car, truck and van in the United States.
60% of the tax payers must hire a professional to get through their own tax returns. Taxes eat up 33% of the average family’s income—more than the cost of food, clothing, and shelter combined.
Is the IRS a boon to American citizens? Hardly. Is the IRS broken? Oh boy, is it ever. Can it be fixed? Good question. But in the light of how modestly it began and the monstrosity it has become today, don’t expect the frog to turn into a prince anytime soon.
(Printer friendly version) Email: James T. Moore
