By: RmuseMay. 14th, 2013
There is an old saying that nothing in life is certain except death
and taxes, but if one lives in the United States, only death is certain.
It is true that few Americans like paying taxes, but they like their
roads, schools, police and fire protection, and prisons that keep
criminals under lock and key. Republicans detest taxes as a matter of
course, and their wealthy corporate paymasters have made sure over the
past two years that the Internal Revenue Service tasked with collecting
taxes to fund government services all Americans depend on cannot
properly execute their jobs of collecting taxes because funding cuts
have left the agency woefully understaffed and impotent.
Republicans have spent the past four-and-a-half years jumping from
one faux outrage to the next to avoid doing the jobs they were sent to
Washington to do, and while they are still embroiled in the fantasy
Benghazi scandal, they have latched on to a report the IRS allegedly
gave extra attention and over-scrutinized neo-conservative teabagger’s
applications for tax exempt status. The IRS’s job is to scrutinize
applications for tax exemption and the truth is they do not scrutinize
tax exempt organizations nearly enough or thoroughly to guarantee that a
group adheres to the rules while they avoid paying taxes like every
other American. However, Republicans have their proverbial panties in a
wad because the IRS was looking carefully at organizations that are
decidedly anti-government and anti-American, and because they did their
jobs, Republicans are crying foul and alleging a scandal giving them
more reason to defund the IRS. It is not that Republicans needed any
reason to defund their paymasters’ mortal enemy, but instead of
criticizing the IRS, they deserve praise for doing their jobs.
The prescient question is not why the IRS gave extra attention to the
teabaggers’ application for tax exemption, but why they did not look
closer at the phony grass roots organization and their billionaire
bankroller’s the Koch brothers. Let’s face it, the group materializes
within weeks of an African American being administered the oath of
office to be President of the United States, and soon thereafter shows
up at protests replete with teabags and revolutionary war garb
complaining they were “
taxed enough already” and warn the government “
we came unarmed this time”
after being given a substantial tax cut by the Black man in the Oval
Office. And why wouldn’t the IRS look closely at a group that gathered
near the Capital Building to hurl racial epithets and spit at African
American Congressional representatives on their way to vote to give
30-40 million Americans access to affordable healthcare teabaggers
claimed was a white privilege and not a human right?
The groups that were scrutinized while applying to avoid paying taxes are
reported
by Fox News to be various so-called patriot groups (read
anti-government militias) that focused on government spending, taxes,
education, and the 9/12 Project, or to put it more succinctly;
anti-government groups. The same groups, by the way, that advocate
arming themselves and starting a civil, race, or revolutionary war to
fight imaginary tyranny imposed by the African American President, and
crusading to eliminate any program that advances the country for the
benefit of all Americans. Doubtless the IRS scrutinized teabagger groups
such as the one the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s
started, Liberty Central, after receiving $690,000 from the Heritage
Foundation that Clarence just happened to
deliberately omit
from his financial disclosure. There are more than enough reasons to
give extra scrutiny to neo-conservative tax exempt applicants, and their
anti-government, anti-tax advocacy should be motivation to increase
scrutiny, not condemn it as “
outrageous.”
Republicans have
starved the IRS of funding for much-needed staffing to collect revenue owed to the government for the past two years and it is an absurd
funding cut
from a fiscally responsible standpoint. Republicans love to tout
running the government as a business, but they ignore the simple premise
of “Return on Investment.” In fiscal year 2012, the IRS collected $2.52
trillion on a budget of $11.8 billion that translates to an average
return-on-investment (ROI) of about 214:1. Last year, the IRS
Commissioner appointed by George W. Bush estimated that proposed
reductions in the IRS budget would cause tax collections to fall seven
times as much, and in a
letter to Congress wrote, “
No
business would fail to fund a unit that, on average, brought in $7 for
every dollar spent. Shareholders would rebel and bring lawsuits, or at
least oust the management or board of directors.”
Now, with a trumped up scandal that should be celebrated, Marco Rubio
called for President Obama to demand the
non-existent IRS Commissioner’s
ouster, even though it was the Bush appointee who resigned in November
who oversaw the extra scrutiny on teabag and patriot (militia)
applications for tax exemption. Some neo-conservatives are
calling for
defunding the IRS, and of course Republicans want to defund the IRS; it
is the ultimate anti-tax advocacy and fits the Kochs, Grover Norquist,
Heritage Foundation, and Republican campaign to “
get government out of the way” by starving it so it is easier to “
get government down to size and drown it in a bathtub.”
However, there is a better idea that Republicans will particularly
bristle at because it is the ultimate expression of equality for all
Americans; end all tax exempt non-profit designations regardless they
are neo-conservative anti-government advocates or theocrats living off
American taxpayers’ forced largesse.
Of course there will be outrage at the suggestion all Americans would have to pay taxes, but Republicans claim “
America is broke”
and yet protect the top Fortune 500 companies, like political and
religious organizations, that pay no income taxes while they depend on
law enforcement, street sweepers, air traffic controllers, and
healthcare providers that serve the community and still pay their fair
share in taxes. It is high time to adequately fund the IRS to scrutinize
and collect taxes from all Americans, but especially anti-government
groups like teabaggers and uber-patriots clamoring for civil war.
President Obama said the IRS giving extra attention to neo-conservative,
anti-government groups’ applications for tax exempt status was
“outrageous,” but he has to say that; this author does not. In fact, the
IRS employees who “
harshly scrutinized” anti-government and
anti-tax groups deserve kudos and assistance in the form of more
investigators to look at giving patriots’ “free-ride” applications added
scrutiny, and instead of backing off, they should be instructed to
scrutinize them with extreme prejudice because if Americans are paying
for them to use our roads, schools, and law enforcement, then they damn
sure better not be the groups or their funding machines actively
campaigning against this government.
Republicans Complain About Incompetence After They’ve Spent Years Defunding the IRS was written by Rmuse for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, May. 14th, 2013. All Rights Reserved
Related Posts :
-
Any business owner knows that inventory reduction, advertising, and transportation expenses should be sc ...
-
The act of singling out any individual, or party, for unmerited negative treatment or blame is scapegoat ...
-
For the past two years, there has been a fair amount of talk concerning shared sacrifice. In theory it i ...
-
When the Constitution's framers wrote the Bill of Rights, they had a profound purpose for the first amen ...
-
While looking for any reason at all to delegitimize President Obama, Sarah Palin decided that the IRS is ...
No comments:
Post a Comment