The Internal Revenue Service generates a lot of anxious thought around this time each year. And it couldn’t happen to a creepier bunch of folks.

The IRS was whelped in 1912 when Congress passed a bill “requiring” individuals to provide revenue for the government. It was sneaked in at Christmastime when most congressmen were home decorating the tree and not there to gang-blast it.

The IRS, then and now, operates on the dubious assumption that a person is guilty until proven innocent—-a crass violation of individual rights. (Remember those?)

In 1968, the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed that the IRS had opened personal mail, tapped phones, threatened reputations, and defied court orders. What they do these days is anybody’s guess.

The General Accounting Office tried to break the IRS lock on secrecy but the IRS blew it off. One staff director of the committee said, “The IRS has become almost a national scandal.” No one could fathom why he said “almost.”

Back in1975, the IRS had 75,000 employees and a budget of $1-billion dollars. If the reality of that kind of money escapes you, try this: if you spent $1,000 a day, every day since Christ was born, you still would not have spent $1-billion dollars.

Now, lest you think the IRS has become less hostile, and more user-friendly, here is the 1999 version, with some statistics that will make any thinking person gag.

The Declaration of Independence is 1,377 words. The Holy Bible is 773,000 words. But the tax law has grown from 11,000 to 7-million words!

Even the “easiest” tax form is 33 pages of fine print. The IRS sends out eight million forms each year. If laid end-to-end these would stretch 28 times around the world!

Nearly 330,000 trees are cut down annually to produce the paper the IRS uses. That should give you pause, and the EPA heartburn.

The IRS employs 114,000 people; twice as many as the CIA, and five times as many as the FBI.

Americans spend $200 billion dollars and five billion hours working on their tax forms. That’s more than it takes to produce every car, truck and van in the United States!

60% of the tax payers must hire a professional to get through their own tax returns.

Taxes eat up 33% of the average family’s income—more than the cost of food, clothing, and shelter combined

And please remember, these figures are from 1999. God only knows what they are today.

Is the IRS broken. Oh boy, is it ever. Can it be fixed? Good question. But in the light of how “modestly” it began, and the monstrosity it has become, don’t expect the frog to turn into a prince anytime soon.

James T. Moore
http://jamestmoore.us/