Many are the Americans who have had adversarial relationships with the Internal Revenue Service. Mine occurred several years ago, when I received a letter from the IRS informing me I owed them $1,600 dollars in taxes because I had not filled out a required form, and that I should pay it immediately or dire consequences might follow. I wrote back informing them that I would revise my income tax for that year, including the required form, and commented that it might have made more sense simply to inform me of the oversight and send me the required form. In a follow-up phone call I was told it was not the job of the IRS to help me file my income tax properly. I realized then that the IRS was not in the business of collecting the right amount of tax from Americans, but rather to gouge as much revenue out of the working population as possible. I will give credit where credit is due; after several years of audits and revisions, during which I did not pay a dime more than I had already contributed in the form of taxes, the IRS issued me a written apology.
Today the IRS is quite unapologetic as revelations have surfaced regarding its targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel organizations seeking tax exempt status, directly and adversely affecting the ability of said organizations to participate effectively in the 2012 presidential election, thus undermining one of our most important rights -- to wit, the right to select those who govern us without prejudice or coercion. This was, of course, the goal of the IRS. In addition, the IRS has misused taxpayer dollars to pay for junkets ... er, conferences ... in which these fine, upstanding "servants of the people" lived it up in $3,000-a-night hotel suites. An audit discovered the IRS spent $49 million on these conferences between 2010-2012; when pressed by Congress, they were unable to produce receipts for $200,000 worth of claimed expenses! Yes, the IRS that is unforgiving when you are unable to produce receipts. When the Senate Finance Committee established a May 31 deadline for the IRS to answer dozens of questions pertaining to these matters, the IRS disdainfully ignored the deadline -- and the requests. On June 4th it told lawmakers that Section 6103 of the tax code exempted it from compliance with congressional requests, a section designed to protect private citizens and their tax returns. So, the Internal Revenue Service is immune to congressional oversight and above the law -- and justifying its non-compliance by claiming it is protecting it's victims! Lois Lerner, the IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, defended herself and the IRS in an opening statement before a congressional committee -- and then, ironically, invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination and refused to answer a single question from your representatives. I say 'ironically' because so many in this government consider the Constitution and Bill of Rights as archaic/irrelevant hindrances -- until they need to use those sacred documents to shield themselves. Lerner would have us believe that this targeting was confined to "rogue" IRS agents in Cincinnati, who acted without any guidance or directives from higher-ups. This weekend, however, it has been revealed Holly Paz, an IRS official from the Washington D.C. office, has admitted to Congress that she was directly involved in the targeting, contradicting Lerner's claims that the IRS was rotten only in Cincinnati. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., insisted that the affair was over and done with following Lerner's assertion that the targeting was confined to Cincinnati and not politically motivated. Now Cummings is accusing Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, of leaking a transcript of Paz's testimony. But last week Cummings leaked excerpts from an interview with an IRS manager in Cincinnati who supported Lerner's claims. Little wonder that the percentage of Americans who trust Congress is at an historic low. You might think I am an alarmist. I am. Intentionally. Because if we let the IRS get away with running roughshod over our rights and misappropriating our taxdollars then we are conceding that the government is no longer answerable to the people. Then we can scratch out that line in the Constitution that speaks of a government "by the people, for the people." Hold your representatives' feet to the fire. Call and write them. Insist they call the IRS to task. It needs to be, before it begins to enforce the socialized medicine program called Obamacare, in which it will be allowed to punish you with tax penalties when you are unable to pay premiums that will rise from 100-400%. |
IS THE IRS ABOVE THE LAW?
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