Unaccountable
One of the gripes we have long had about the way in which IRS employees administer the tax laws has been their immunity from personal responsibility for what are often blatantly illegal actions. In 1998, a law was passed requiring discipline against IRS employees who break the laws. According to this 62 page GAO report on the effects of the law, during the 50 months from July 1998 to September 2002, 71 IRS employees were fired.
The summary of the report in this Wall Street Journal article is quite interesting and quite a bit easier to digest than the GAO's. 62 of the fired IRS employees were actually let go for not filing their own tax returns; not for any of the routine law-breaking that goes on constantly by over-zealous agents. What really frosts me is the implication that the 1998 law has put a serious damper on IRS enforcement actions, thus allowing the tax cheats to run rampant. What a load of crap.
KMK