"Why I Love the IRS"

Published 15 April 2004

(word count: 750)

Since the posting date for this epistle is April 15 you'd naturally expect an exposé on income expropriation.  April 15, after all, is the day we bribe our government not to throw us in jail.  For libertarians, however, any dissertation on taxes would necessarily deteriorate into a (pick one) rant, rage, tirade, diatribe, harangue or hissy fit.  So let's take a different approach.  I'll give you three reasons why I love the IRS.

Meet New People

Long ago I traded in my paper checkbook for money managing software and online bill paying.  When I write a tax deduction related payment I Just click a category.  At the end of the year I generate a Tax Summary Report and it's all regurgitated onto paper nice and neat for me.  But that's where I draw the line.  I can't tolerate working through a 1040 form.  It just can't be done the same way as the year before because, as everyone knows, there's a conspiracy between congress and the IRScrats to stir the tax pot with a spoon every year to benefit the lucrative tax preparation industry.  Even so, I'd rather pay those professionals than spend a minute of my time on such an odious undertaking.  And, since I go to different practitioners of the tax-prep arts from year to year, I get to meet new people.  This year I used Liberty Tax Service, an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Nostalgia

In the 1970s I joined the Libertarian Party of Minnesota and did a stint as newsletter editor.  I renamed the little 8-1/2 by 11 bulletin the Minnesota Libertarian and turned it into an eight-page tabloid-sized outreach newspaper.  Alas, as still happens today, the party periodically went into hibernation and I was hard pressed to fill the presses with even four pages of libertarian related reports.  But I could always count on Tax Day.  Like this old yellowed sheet in front of me from 1978, with the "Taxation is Theft" headline above the front-page fold and the photo of protest signs proclaiming, "Enough is Enough" and "Vote Libertarian."  The IRS was always a libertarian editor's best friend.

Recharging Batteries

April 15 is an annual reminder of why I'm still a libertarian after all these years, and why everyone else ought to be.  Not only is taxation theft, but most tax usage is fraudulent.  Since something like 90 percent of what our Big Fat Geek Government does isn't countenanced by the Constitution, spending our tax money on that 90 percent isn't legitimate either.  Add to that the monumental waste in the 10 percent that actually is Constitutional (military, police and courts) and you get fraud at its finest.  A few fine examples:

Military: "The Pentagon's own inspector general recently admitted that the department could not account for more than a trillion dollars of past spending." – The Guardian, May 2003

Police: "A $1.6 million advertising campaign on radio and television, Click It or Ticket signs at thousands of gas pumps statewide, movie screen advertising, inserts in electric bills and city newsletters and banners posted at welcome centers and rest areas will serve as a reminder to motorists of the importance, for their pocketbook and their safety, of buckling up." - Monroe County Florida Sheriff's Office press release, May 2002.

Courts: "In 1987, U.S. District Judge Russell Clark ordered a tax increase to 'remedy vestiges of segregation' in the Kansas City school system.  Ashcroft, who was Missouri governor at the time, called the ruling 'appalling judicial activism' and said it imposed on taxpayers a $2 billion cost that 'turned the city's school district into a gold-plated Taj Mahal." – CBSNews.com, January 2001.

How anyone can describe taxpaying as "patriotic" is beyond any comprehension I've ever been able to wring from Psychology 101.  Patriotism demands the perpetual protest against taxes.  Our nation was born of it.  Think Boston Tea Party.  Think Stamp Tax and Sugar Act and the Townshend import duties.  Then, just for good measure, think further downstream to the Whisky Rebellion.

The IRS is the root of all political evil.  The federal income tax makes unconstitutional government possible.  The reason I love the IRS is the knowledge that once we abolish it – and everything else that threatens to merely replace it, like a "fair" tax or flat tax or national sales tax – we will have solved 90 percent of this nation's politically transmitted diseases.  And that makes it easier to train our Eternal Vigilance on the remaining ten percent of government waste.

So: Go, IRS!

- by Garry Reed