The IRS has acknowledged that federal income tax evasion is now at the $1 trillion a year level. The proposed solution—a huge increase in the IRS’s budget. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. For decades, Washington bureaucrats have been stuck on the idea that the solution to any problem is to throw more money at it.
52,000 of the present 83,000 IRS employees are expected to retire or leave the agency in the next five years. Most of these are experienced agents.
President Biden wants to add 87,000 new IRS agents and have most of them audit income tax returns. Of course, the new hires will have little to no experience, and relatively few will have formal accounting training.
Hiring more employees would make sense if the problems at the IRS were rooted in a simple lack of manpower. Sadly though, that’s just not the case. Simply adding more employees won’t transform the IRS into a finely tuned operation that runs smoothly and efficiently.
The problems at the IRS are rooted in the Internal Revenue Code itself. The very nature of the IRC makes it difficult to enforce without infringing on the basic freedoms that most Americans cherish. As Albert Einstein said, “Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”
A 2021 article that appeared on the Americans For Tax Reform website provided the following information:
- A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report on the 2021 Filing Season found that almost 40 percent of printers were not working at tax processing centers in Ogden, Utah and Kansas City, Missouri. However, in many cases the only thing wrong with them was that no one had replaced empty ink cartridges or emptied the waste cartridge container: “IRS employees stated that the only reason they could not use many of these devices is because they are out of ink or because the waste cartridge container is full.”
- This year, despite having funding for new hires, the IRS only achieved 37 percent of its hiring goal. They had trouble onboarding new hires as well, as it was “difficult to find working copiers (as noted previously) to be able to prepare training packages.”
- The National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2018 Annual Report to Congress noted that the IRS was ranked last out of 15 federal agencies in its ability to provide quality communication. The report notes that taxpayers trying to reach the IRS are often “left floundering on the rocks of confusion, frustration, and misinformation.”
- The National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2020 report to Congress noted that the IRS has failed to hire over 5,000 full time employees for which it had allocated funding. This was because of the agency’s disorganization, incompetence, and the existence of labor union rules that promote needless bureaucracy.
- In 2016, the IRS has lost track of laptops containing sensitive taxpayer data. TIGTA estimates that the IRS had failed to properly document the return of 84.2 percent, or more than 1,000 computers due to be returned by contract employees.
- A TIGTA report in 2017 showed that the IRS rehired more than 200 employees who had been fired for previous conduct or performance issues.
- Each year the IRS hangs up on millions of callers -- a practice they refer to as “Courtesy Disconnects.” Currently, if you call the IRS, you have a 1-in-50 chance of reaching a human being.
- According to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2014 Annual Report to Congress the IRS was unable to justify spending decisions. As the report stated: "The IRS lacks a principled basis for making the difficult resource allocation decisions necessitated by today’s tight budget environment.”
- The agency has repeatedly failed to compile legally required tax complexity reports. These reports are supposed to contain the IRS's specific recommendations on how to make the tax code easier to comply with. Since 1998, the IRS has done so just twice – in 2000 and 2002.
- In 2015, the IRS was spending $1,000 an hour hiring a litigation-only white shoe law firm for an investigation, despite having over 40,000 employees dedicated to enforcement efforts.
- In 2015, the agency has been caught red-handed wasting taxpayer dollars on Nerf footballs, the world’s largest crossword puzzle, extravagant $100 dollar lunches, and more.
Mr. President and Members of Congress, it is time to recognize that the income/payroll tax system is not the best way to collect revenue for the federal government.
Yes, the 16th Amendment and the courts have ruled that the income/payroll tax system is legal, but remember the words of Abraham Lincoln who said, “You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right.”
- Please recognize that hiring a new army of IRS agents won’t solve the problem. It will actually make it worse by increasing the number of abuses directed at honest taxpayers who are trying to comply with an incomprehensible and sometimes contradictory tax code. When that happens, you’ll see two things:
- More people evading their own taxes
- More honest people sympathizing with the ever-growing number of tax evaders
The FAIRtax will:
- Show every person in America multiple times a day that there is a cost of the government benefits they are receiving;
- Reduce the amount of annual increase in the federal debt by at least $1 trillion because it drastically reduces evasion;
- Bring high-paying jobs back to America that are now being forced overseas by the income/payroll tax system;
- Eliminate tax returns and the IRS;
- Prevent Medicare from running out of money by 2026;
- Make Social Security solvent;
We can write letters and make calls to our elected representatives demanding that if the government really wants to eliminate the burden of filing income tax returns, they should enact the FAIRtax and do away with tax returns altogether.
The great 18th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke made a statement that applies in many ways,
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
If you want to prevent the IRS from being further weaponized to punish those of us who may object to the D.C. opinions and dictates of what is good for us, then help us PASS THE FAIRTAX!
The IRS will be gone and we will pay our taxes when we make purchases. WE and not D.C. Elites will decide how much federal tax we pay!
If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to FAIRtax.org. Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.
Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax.
Remember, if we don't continue to tell the truth and demand a change, then this quote from George Orwell's 1984 may foretell our children's future:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Is it hopeless? When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”
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