by Matt Buckley
Our country gets what it asks for. We ask for tax collection to fund the government. We ask for exemptions and regulations in our tax code, to subsidize and penalize all manner of behavior. Over the course of the past century, particularly the last fifty years, the result has been the creation of a massive tax collection apparatus, given the duty of enforcing a thoroughly complex tax code and collecting massive amounts of money.
Obviously, the result is imperfect, as recent Senate hearings show. Recently, the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized for abuses by agents during tax collection. The list of such abuses is extensive. With individual branches competing to collect the most money, the IRS's internal organization fostered a climate where abusive practices ran rampant. In order to get ever more tax dollars, fierce suspicion of all potential tax debtors was combined with the IRS's vast authority, creating a serious threat to taxpayers.
The tales reported before the Senate Finance Committee were illustrative. One woman spent 17 years trying to fix the IRS's mistake over the identity of her husband. Another case involved a priest wrongly assessed for his mother's estate, to the tune of $18,000. Comments by IRS agents suggested that middle-class and lower-class workers were targeted by IRS employees trying to get more tax dollars; since the rich have better accountants, the middle and lower classes were easier to squeeze. All in all, this month has been one of the worst public relations periods for the IRS ever.
Certainly, the actions of a few agents should not be grounds to slander the entire IRS. The IRS fulfills its function better than similar foreign organizations, and certainly performed admirably given hardware problems and an ever-more-complex tax code. The country could clearly do much worse than the current IRS.
Yet the problems posed by the recent IRS scandal are serious, and demand solutions. The best solution would be to enact a simpler tax code. While a simpler tax code would not cure the problem of agents pursuing the lower classes, it would make it easier for individuals to file their returns without filing errors which confuse the system. By eliminating various "corporate welfare" loopholes which favor the rich, it would also make standardized enforcement of the tax code easier.
Not only would this path be effective at lessening the IRS's problems, but it would also be politically popular. The issues of IRS security notwithstanding, a simpler, fairer tax code has a resonating appeal to much of the American public. While a flat tax may not be possible for some time, there is certainly public demand to reduce the massive complexity found in the tax code. If politians could overcome their twin habits of complicating the tax code and subsidizing large corporations, perhaps then the IRS could better fulfill its essential role in the American government.