Enlighten me, how is the taxpayer to “understand and meet” “tax obligations” when the agency who collects those tax obligations refuses to answer questions, actively hinders transparency, denies accountability and refuses scrutiny? Through forced taxation, collected by fear of the stick, America has been abused since the IRS was created out of whole cloth, not from the U.S. Constitution, but the demented minds of a president and complicit Congress.
Under the heading of “Statutory Authority,” we find the following:
“The IRS is organized to carry out the responsibilities of the secretary of the Treasury under section 7801 of the Internal Revenue Code. The secretary has full authority to administer and enforce the internal revenue laws and has the power to create an agency to enforce these laws. The IRS was created based on this legislative grant.
Section 7803 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the appointment of a commissioner of Internal Revenue to administer and supervise the execution and application of the internal revenue laws.”
Progressive and progressivism is a political philosophy that empowers a more extensive and more intrusive government, a government without any shred of decency, and a government as intrusive as possible into your daily life. Progressivism has been the catchphrase for all sorts of political hooliganism and liberty theft at all levels of government. These abuses by the government have been made possible because, as everyone knows, progress, the root of progressivism, is a good thing; it is progress, right? Not quite, according to the politicians and the bureaucrats who think they own you and me.
Progress is defined as moving forward or onward towards the desired destination. Also, progress can be advancement or development towards a better, or more complete, “modern condition.” Archaic definitions sometimes provide critical insight into a word, and in this instance, the archaic meaning of progress was a state journey or official tour, especially by royalty.
Progressive means something relating to or characterized by progress without the political connotations, using new ideas, findings, or opportunities. In the classroom, progressive relates to an educational theory marked by an emphasis on the individual child, informal class procedures, and encouraging self-expression to the point of sacrificing educational opportunities. The meaning of progressive also refers to making progress, moving forward or advancing, increasing in severity or extent, expanding the base rate of something, and a few other definitions specific to the sciences of computers and lenses for glasses.
President Woodrow Wilson (D) was a progressive, and many of his political detractors were regressive. The distinction was drawn on a political scale to aid in differentiating and scorning political opponents concerned about the spread of government. We need to be clear that any time anyone talks about progressive taxes, they discuss expanding the base tax rate. Making tax increases sound more pleasant is a key to twisting the meaning of words and exercising tyranny on a population.
As you might have probably guessed, regression is the exact opposite of progression. Regressive relates to regression production, decreasing the rate as the base increases, and is characterized by simplifying structures in an evolutionary process. Regression is the act of regressing. Regressing relates to the act of reasoning backward, moving backward to a previous and possibly worse or more primitive state. It is also a privilege of going or coming back to something.
Regressive is most used in refusing to cut taxes, so the opponents to “progressive” taxes are automatically regressive. In actuality, progressive is all about increasing government size, government taxes, and government bureaucracy; thus, the opponents of progressive taxes should own and explain why being regressive is a good thing. Yet, they never do, and representative governments across the globe are worse for this plastic language. The consequences of ever bigger government and taxes, fees, surcharges, fines, etc., dreamed up as “progress.”
Tax Gap
Due to proposed legislation, the media has been quick to jump onto the tax bandwagon. The media are trying to drum up a lot of hype for the proposed bill, calling it fairness, catching the tax cheaters, working to bring “fairness” to the tax system, and progressing the tax system to close the loopholes improve tax enforcement. The “tax gap;” is $600 million in mostly tax errors because the tax system is too complicated. How do you tell the difference between tax cheaters and honest people trying to obey the tax authorities? Therein lies the problem, to the IRS, everyone making an error is guilty until proven innocent, and either way, you will pay something to the IRS to get out of trouble.
What is the problem? The IRS is going to use its newfound enforcement ability from this legislation to punish and abuse. Congress is always talking about closing loopholes, but what they mean is allow political cronies and connections to keep doing what they are doing and force the rest of America to pay for the privilege of being abused.
Tax Enforcement
Long have I been concerned that the agencies of the Federal Government have become weapons against the citizenry. With Lois Lerner and the 501 (C) (3) debacle still ongoing at the IRS, this concern about government weaponizing has only strengthened. Yet, what do we find from politicians on both sides of the aisle; crickets, platitudes, double-speak, and an attitude of not caring. What do we see from state and local government officials who are in a position to protect the citizen from run-away government, even less. With the proposed legislation being kicked around, granting money to a Federal Agency with a history of sleight of hand, deviousness, and abuse of power, seems to be the worst mistake possible. Why are the legislatures not taking the IRS to task and scrutinizing them more closely, ending the farrago of Lois Lerner and holding real people accountable for real crimes?
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.
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