I got an email from my brother-in-law the other day, after we had discussed the tax treatment of various home improvements on his personal residence, that said, “I might be preaching to the choir, but screw the IRS.”
His sentiment is a very widely-held one. Who doesn’t hate paying taxes and trying to figure out the logic behind some of the tax rules? “Death to the IRS” is a common sentiment. But I think the resentment is misdirected.
The IRS is just the messenger. They’re like the hired hit-man who does the work of the truly evil masterminds behind criminal activities. The U.S. Congress and Senate are the bodies which come up with the tedious tax law. They have then empowered the IRS to go out and collect that money.
What is really interesting is when this is viewed through Ayn Rand’s eyes in Atlas Shrugged. One of the main characters, Hank Rearden, stands firm in his position that the only reason government is able to get away with its activities, i.e. confiscation of earnings, is because they have bigger and better guns. If I refused to pay my taxes because I was ethically opposed to it, the IRS would send me notices. If I refused to pay on the notices, they would garnish my wages. If I didn’t have an employer to do the garnishing for them, they would eventually arrest me for tax evasion. If I refused to go with them in their police car, they would physically harm me in order to gain my compliance. If I resisted further and tried to defend myself, the police would hold a gun up and demand that I comply.
Is reality really this extreme? Probably not. But I still think it’s important to think about the principals behind what Rand is saying. I think, in this character at least, Rand stops one step short though in the “blame-game”. We do need to remember that we live in a democracy/republic where we have voted to allow Congress to levy taxes and empower the IRS to collect the money. So if we hate it, we have only ourselves to blame for giving our leaders that power.
Last 3 posts by Eric
- Social Security Finally Bankrupt? - February 4th, 2010
- Business Cliches - January 15th, 2010
- Conan O'Brien - January 12th, 2010
I wholly agree, BUT to fix the problem we’d have to have a revolution of sorts leading to the election of representatives who would be willing to vote for either a tax system with no penalty (bad) or a less complicated system/overhaul (good). The chance of that… is slim.
The WSJ today mentions Germany’s “beer-coaster” reform movement, “The current rates, which rise gradually from 14% to 45%, would be replaced with three brackets of 15%, 25% and 35%. The proposal has come to be known as the “beer-coaster reform”—as in, you could fit the whole tax return on a beer coaster. The reform would make Germany’s tax code among the most competitive and transparent in the industrialized world.”
I’d first try for term limits for Senators and Representatives - hopefully this would lead to them making decisions based on the present instead of the upcoming 3 elections.