Pro IRS Propaganda

The current wave of slanted media hype to try to drum up support for more IRS power is underway. These two stories are fairly typical of the lies that the media tell in order to make the public feel good about an even more powerful IRS. Besides their love of big government, which obviously needs as much money as possible, my only guess for the motivation for these puff pieces is a desire to avoid IRS audits. I can only assume that it is working because, if one of these people is ever subjected to the same kind of torture IRS inflicts on millions of regular people each year, they would be sure to bitch about it plenty.

Cheating
The media love to portray everyone as a tax cheater, with a big powerful IRS the only way to prevent that, such as this piece that claims 24% of people don't consider cheating on taxes to be a mortal sin, based on some idiotic non-scientific survey. This is just pure crap. As I see every single day, rather than pervasive cheating, most people overpay their taxes because of ignorance of readily available tax savings breaks and/or sloppy bookkeeping.

Hamstrung IRS
This sob story for the poor IRS cracks me up. Supposedly, they were the innocent victims of a witch hunt in the 1990s and have been unable to do their job effectively ever since. This is another big fat steaming load of crapola. The big congressional hearings about IRS abuses only scratched the surface and, just like every disclosure of government waste, everyone has a big laugh and then it's back to business as usual. Have the Feds stopped paying $600 for toilet seats after that came out in a hearing? Not a chance. IRS is still operating in the exact same abusive and incompetent manner as when those hearings were held.

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 9/17/2002 04:43:00 PM Send this post: