Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The IRS's Orwellian Love of Labels

It's not an earth shaking scandal but it is indicative of a lawless bureaucracy that flouts the law while demanding strict compliance on the part of the public for the laws it wishes to enforce. The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 forbids the IRS from employing such pejorative labels such as "tax protestor" and "constitutionally challenged" and ordered the agency to purge taxpayers' records of such labels so as not to prejudice future interactions. Now, 15 years later the IRS has yet to fully comply.
According to an audit just released by TIGTA (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) auditors found 54 such instances by 45 employees where the verboten nomenclature was still used. Will we, 15 years from now, find "tea party" and "patriot" used to denote troublemakers?

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