The End of my IRS Saga

Those of you who have been reading my blog for at least the past four months know that the IRS sent me a bill for $18,419 in back taxes and penalties acrued on my mother's 2008 return.

As stated in my previous post, I was not disturbed, as I had just received the gift of life--a new kidney. Anything else was unimportant. I was alive, and at least as of this writing, the IRS is not allowed to take taxpayers' organs in payment. This matter would either be resolved or I'd pay the debt little by little for the rest of my days.

A careful review of my records showed that the IRS had made a mistake. I sent a rebuttal to the appropriate authorities. After 10 weeks, the IRS responded with a reduced demand: $363. This didn't seem right either, so I looked harder at the records and asked an accountant for her opinion. Turns out I only owe $6. No sense fighting that, so I sent a check off on Sunday.

To think of the manpower involved in getting this $6 from me. I'm sure that the IRS spent at least 20 hours in this pursuit. At, let's say, $50/hour, when one includes the government worker's benefits and the contribution to her retirement, that brings the government's cost to $1,000.

The IRS's personnel should be rather tasked with going after the big offenders--large corporations that currently pay nothing in taxes and even get enormous tax credits. GE, General Electric, is a prime example. The largest corporation in the U.S., which posted $14.2 billion in profits last year, not only paid no taxes but claimed a $3.2 billion tax credit. Surely, an outfit like that should receive the scrutiny of at least a few IRS auditors. But no. Only the small fry, the common man and woman, are under the gun at the IRS.

To make the situation even more ludicrous, House Republicans would like to cut $600 million from the IRS's budget. This is ironic for a party that is interested in deficit reduction, as every dollar that the IRS spends, it reaps $10 in retrieved tax money. Even the conservative Fox News reports this data.

Of course, like everyone else in this country, and I'm sure everyone else throughout history in every country, I am not fond of the tax man. I truly hate supporting war, violence, and the suppression of democracy throughout the world with my tax dollars.

I wish that each citizen could fill out a form on his or her tax return as to how his or her taxes should be spent. I'd give mine to things like the national parks, the arts, and the care of the less fortunate. I wouldn't give a penny of my money to so-called defense, so-called intelligence, or so-called security. Now other citizens might decide they didn't give a hoot for the national park system or for the arts, but they were gung-ho for the military and the CIA. Those folks could vote their taxes that way. This would be true democracy. A line-item veto of those programs you deemed worthless or immoral, and a line-item endorsement of those programs you deemed worthwhile and life-affirming. That would certainly show the government what the citizens thought of our so-called leaders' priorities.

But if anyone should pay taxes it's the corporations and the super-rich who own the corporations. They have benefitted the most from what the government has provided--public education so that workers are prepared to toil in their businesses, and roads and bridges and the rest of the infrastructure that gets their goods to market, and military operations to keep corporation-friendly dictators in power, to name a few. Why the Average Joe and Average Mary should foot the bill when so many of the wealthy get off scot-free is a question that is surely being asked more and more often these days. A question that if sufficiently inflamed could transform society.