Letter: Reduce power of IRS

For years, The Wall Street Journal sent a hypothetical taxpayer circumstance to 10 different CPA firms. Year after year, they would receive back 10 different tax liabilities.

Taxpayers’ unease with the IRS continues to grow as once again the agency is shown to create its own laws, priorities, and rules (“The IRS Evades Accountability and Its Excuse is Ridiculous,” Jan. 10, The Wall Street Journal).

Compounding the worry is the five years it took to prove the IRS guilty of slow-walking Tea Party-Patriot groups on applications for exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election. The $3.5 million fine paid by taxpayers was another slap in the face of attentive Americans.

Add that former IRS chief Lois Lerner, who covered up agency wrongdoing before Congress for two years, retired with full benefits and you’re leading taxpayers to conclude that the IRS rules Congress, not the other way around.

The only way to de-weaponize the IRS, which obviously intimidates lawmakers, is to go to a national sales tax. This would simplify rules, stop the threat of nefarious audits, and end the IRS as a tool against enemies of the bureaucratic state.

The American ideal, the “pursuit of happiness,” never included the muscular arm of authoritative government tattooed with the letters “IRS.”