Abolish The I.R.S.

According to a Gallup poll taken in 2014, forty-one percent of people feel that the Internal Revenue Service is doing an "excellent" or "good" job. Another 29% believe the agency is doing a "fair" job. Only 27% believe they are doing a "poor" job. Maybe they are mostly saying nice things because they are afraid of the agency's SWAT team.

I will grant that the I.R.S. does a good job, in the sense that they do the best with what they've got. Anyone with real talent works for the private sector.

Or increasingly, in the underground economy. It is estimated that there is as much as two trillion dollars in off-the-books economic activity every year. That is because taxes are too high, and too complicated to figure out. The estimated loss of tax by the shadow economy is in the neighborhood of $500 billion a year.

I do my own taxes, because I take the standard deduction. I usually use TurboTax, and I am always done with state and federal in about an hour. I just hope that somebody hasn't already fraudulently claimed my state tax refund. The longer you wait to file, the greater the chance.

Perhaps the fraud rate would be reduced if filers of fraudulent returns weren't able to have their "refunds" sent to untraceable pre-paid debit cards.

Fraudulent state returns are actually the least of the documented problems plaguing the agency, and its mission to fairly enforce the tax code. One of the biggest scams now going is the abuse of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The Treasury Department estimates 22 to 26 percent of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2013. The dollar value of these improper payments was estimated to be between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion. I have never read a news story of anyone facing prosecution for this crime.

E.I.T.C. fraud will only get bigger, because, thanks to President Obama, you don't even have to be a United States citizen. Obama's deferred action on illegal immigrants means that they get social security cards and can use them to file for E.I.T.C. refunds. They can even file amended returns for three previous years. This is the President's amnesty bonus.

Perhaps the fraud would decrease if we simplified the tax code. Most taxpayers receive their health insurance through their employer. This is a relic of World War Two wage and price controls. Employers couldn't lure new employees with a higher wage, so they were forced to offer health packages. This vestigal benefit is what allowed a law like Obamacare to be wrought upon us. This tax exclusion costs over $200 billion a year.

Another $100 billion a year goes for the mortgage interest deduction. Abolish it. Grandfather in existing mortgages and abolish it going forward. I don't believe any tax deductions are sacred cows, even the deduction for charitable giving. Too often, the tax code is used to sanction politically favored groups.

The I.R.S. overwhelmingly favors Democratic causes and candidates. Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from I.R.S. employees go to Democrats. And I.R.S. employees are represented by The National Treasury Employees Union. The N.T.E.U. operates a political action committee that allocates ninety-six percent of its donations to help elect Democrats.

The collusion between public sector employee unions and the lawmakers they elect is nothing short of a criminal enterprise. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed public employee unions, saying, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."