The left now loves the IRS…
…and says you have nothing to fear from the agency going on steroids, if you haven’t cheated on your taxes.
Perhaps they know they won’t be the ones targeted.
"Can you understand how 87,000 new IRS agents would scare the heck out of millions of Americans?"
Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin: "If there's no reason to be fearful, and if you paid your taxes and if you complied with our laws, you should want to make sure everyone else does that." pic.twitter.com/xRwSes2CrC
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 7, 2022
Not your father’s left.
The old left was afraid of the feds because it hadn’t yet become the feds. Today’s left loves them. The old left championed free speech for unpopular views because it wanted free speech for itself. Now it wants to shut down views that oppose it, because it can.
You Have Nothing To Fear, But Fear Itself.
I bet that if the nice Senator ever had a deep dive on his taxes it would not be pretty. The tax laws are so complicated that a lot of people do make mistakes. I use TurboTax and have for years. Our taxes are very simple now, but I still pay for the Audit Defense that they offer.
And there is this too.
“An official report published by the Government Accountability Office said that at the end of 2017, the IRS had 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in its weapons inventory
I’m so old I can remember when “Infernal Revenue Service” was a common typo, partly because spellcheck won’t catch it, and partly because of parapraxis, aka “Freudian slip.”
I’d be a lot more likely to believe in the IRS if it couldn’t accuse you of criminal wrongdoing for doing your taxes exactly as the IRS itself told you to. That is, people who call up the IRS help line (and do as the help line recommends) get audited and then charged with tax evasion.
After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Unless you work for the government, of course, because then you get qualified immunity.
John Hinderaker, at Power Line, points out another good reason to fear the IRS expansion. The IRS was used in the Obama years to harass conservative non-profits and conservative businesses. Now we may see this on steroids.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/whats-behind-the-democrats-irs-expansion.php
At Neo’s recent post about the FBI, I commented that I agreed with those who’ve said that the FBI can’t be reformed. I’ve reached the same conclusion about the IRS, and would hope to one day see the repeal of the Constitutional amendment that gave us the income tax.
But we don’t need to wait for the end of that long Constitutional process. As with the FBI, blowing up the IRS building would be a potent symbol. Next would be a legislative repeal of the income tax. Next would be the implementation of a national sales tax or VAT, to be collected by the Treasury Department. The IRS could then be dissolved.
As with the dissolution of the FBI, there would be trade-offs, but the politicization of the IRS requires a drastic response.
To be blunt I bet he’d say that only a criminal needs the 5th amendment as well. (Yeah, I’m not going to fall for that.)
The tyrannical always expose their illegitimacy.
The greater the injustice, the fiercer will be the whirlwind they reap.
I had an “interesting” exchange with a progressive a few weeks ago on the subject of the crisis pregnancy centers run by pro-lifers. He was totally in agreement with Elizabeth Warren that the government should shut them down. You know, “misinformation” and all that. Yet he would no doubt say that he believes in free speech.
I think it was Rod Dreher who noted a while back that contemporary progressives are basically in agreement with the Catholic Church of old about suppressing heresy on the grounds that “error has no rights.” They only disagree about the details.
“If you complied with our laws”
Ha! Yea, like anyone could ever fully understand the whole tax code. Even professional tax preparers make mistakes sometimes.
And my tax refund? Just where is it? It is August already and I still don't know when I will get it. Some family members are still waiting for their tax refund from 3 years ago.
We cannot seem to get our money when it is clearly owed to us – how can you take on the government when they write the laws and selectively enforce them to screw you over?
Democrats are fascists.
The shocking thing in Cardin’s statement is how comfortable he is with the idea of people fearing the government.
Three Felonies a Day
Ham Sandwich Nation
After years of gaslighting us while the IRS, DOJ, FBI and CIA violated the constitution and the law relentlessly, they top off their criminal persecution by raiding Trump and we’re supposed to simply TRUST their good intentions?
How much evil does it take before people have had enough?
StevenP — “Democrats are fascists.”
Italian socialists, National Socialists, Soviet socialists, Mao/Ho/Castro socialists … socialists are all the same. Tyranny and dictatorship operate according to the tried and true system.
History will show that the Soros socialists running America fit the mold.
I hope no one has forgotten the truly horrible Lois Lerner who, according to a relative who worked with her, had no interest at all but expanding her own power. Do you not remember how she went after non-profits with Tea Party ties? This woman was a fine, fine exemplar of a great IRS employee to hear some tell it but, like nearly all bureaucrats nowadays, she was a monster. And don’t forget, she got off scott free by retiring with her full pension in spite of all of the wrongs she committed.
Is the new left to which you refer the new left of the 1960’s? If so, I contend they always wanted to abolish freedom once they displaced the establishment.
Is the new left to which you refer the new left of the 1960’s? If so, I contend they always wanted to abolish freedom once they displaced the establishment.
Irving Howe, literary critic, editor of Dissent, and one-time Trotskyist, published ca. 1975 a brief account of a meeting with Tom Hayden and other members of the SDS (“then a tiny, little known organization”) in 1965. He found them quite disturbing, and his impression was that if they found he was in the way, they’d have him shot.
Note, the residue of the SDS was taken over by Maoists in 1969. Alongside the SDS, you had explicitly communist outfits like the “Progressive Labor Party” and the DuBois Clubs.
and would hope to one day see the repeal of the Constitutional amendment that gave us the income tax.
Absolutely unnecessary and injurious. The problem isn’t the income tax, it’s the discretion the legislature has over the dimensions and properties of the tax base. The tax code was turned into a means of building patron-client relations between politicians and business sectors. The same could happen with a value added tax.
No clue what the obsession with the IRS is, as if the initials were a maleficent incantation. You have to have a tax collector. Doesn’t matter if it’s collecting tariffs, income taxes, value added taxes, sales taxes, property taxes. If it is granted discretionary power and intramural inspectorates are weak or non-existent, there will be abuses. You want there to be fewer abuses, have a strong and insulated inspector-general, end the impediments to firing public employees (being very careful to use vigorous screening examinations for hiring and promotion), and reduce the discretion of said employees. You reduce their discretion by simplifying the code and restricting their franchise issue liens and undertake levies.
May I commend to you Michael Anton’s short essay at The American Mind, Socialism and the Great Reset as regards what “History will show . . .”?
In a peculiar sense what “History will show” is that history will not show what History’s greatest proponents claim (from necessity itself) it will show. Taking their claims seriously, in other words, we find “History” refutes itself: their rules, their defeat.
Here’s a suggestion for avoiding or at least containing the sort of abuses in which Lois Lerner was engaged:
1. Sort all corporations into categories of ‘intra-state’ and ‘inter-state’. A corporation is ‘inter-state’ if (1) it is a subsidiary of a corporation domiciled abroad, (2) has a foreign subsidiary, (3) places its American hq outside the state which issued its charter, or (4) employs people over and above a certain allowance outside the state in which its hq is located. The ‘allowance’ would consist of itinerant sales, promotional, and service personnel amounting to no more than 4% of a company’s workforce.
2. Sort corporations into these categories according to the mode of organization specified in their state charter and by-laws: business corporations, philanthropic corporations, producer co-operatives, or government corporations.
3. Exempt from federal taxation the following: producer co-operatives, government corporations, and intrastate business and philanthropic corporations. Simply require them to file a one page exemption claim, signed by a lawyer and an accountant. They could be subject to audits to verify their claim, but that would be it.
4. Allow inter-state business corporations one of two modes for satisfying their tax liability.
a. One would be to pay a flat rate on their total revenue. If they’re a multinational, they would pay the following: d x r x g, where ‘g’ is their global revenue, ‘r’ the aforementional flat rate, and ‘d’ the proportion of their global workforce located in the United States.
b. Another would be to require the board issue shares of common stock in the corporation to a federal fund, the number being n% of the extant pool of outstanding shares and treasury stock. If the firm is a multi-national, the % issued would be (n x d), where ‘d’ is the percentage of the firm’s global workforce located in the U.S. The voting rights on such stock would be in abeyance for as long as the federal fund held the stock, and a controlling interest in the corporation defined as 50.1% of all outstanding shares whose voting rights were not in abeyance. The government would be compelled to sell the shares in due time, either on the stock exchange or, in the case of a private firm, in an online auction.
5. In re philanthropic corporations,
a. require they report the total compensation of each their most handsomely remunerated employees. If the corporation employs > 350 people (FTE), require the compensation of the top 50 be reported. If it employs fewer, require they report the compensation of the top 1/7th, rounding to the greater integer.
b. If they employ two or more people who are presumptively in the same household, all of the compensation those people receive should be understood for tax purposes to be the compensation of the head of household and reported as if it were distributed to just that person.
c. Calculate the ‘expected compensation’ of classes their senior employees. The ‘c’ class would be the top 1/7th or top 50. The ‘b’ class would be the square-root rounded up of the top 1/7th or, for larger bodies, the top 8. The ‘a’ class would be the most handsomely remunerated employee. The expected compensation would be calculated according to a formula which had the companies total workforce (FTE), the mean nominal compensation per worker in the United States, and the size of the employee class being assessed (between 1 and 50) as arguments. The larger a company’s workforce, the higher the expected compensation of its senior employees.
d. Require a summary report from the company of its revenue sources, specifically the portion which they receive for the provision of medical and nursing services, if any.
e. For class c, b, and a workers, calculate the amount by which their actual compensation exceeds their ‘expected compensation’.
f. If the philanthropy provides medical services, subtract from their ‘actual compensation’ a set of mulligans. They would receive a mulligan for each licensed physician among their c, b, and a class employees. The mulligan would be calculated thus: p x c, where ‘p’ is the share of their revenue derived from medical service provision and ‘c’ is the mean annual cash compensation received by physicians and surgeons in this country in a given year, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
g. having applied any mulligans due (and, aside from hospitals, most philanthropies will not be due any), assess the value of ‘excess’ compensation applied to ‘c’, ‘b’, and ‘a’ classes of senior employees, and select the highest value among them. That will be the companies corporation tax liability.
Philanthropic corporations would not be tax exempt, but they would have no liability if they keep their compensation schedules in bounds. If Lois Lerner wanted to harass people, she’d have to order audits to ascertain if their claim of being an intra-state body were true or audits of their statements on revenue and compensation. However, these audits could only commence once their first set of statements were due, which would be some months after they’d commenced operations.
Another thing you could due would be to end nearly all exemptions, deductions, and credits incorporated within the income tax code. The exception would be a per-person exemption or per-person credit designed to reduce the liability of households with proportionate effect inversely related to income. In doing so, you eliminate the deductions, exemptions, and credits for philanthropic donations, which removes a conduit for the Lerners of this world to show favor to preferred philanthropies.