0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Tax Reform means more tax litigation, 2004-09-15
In 13 years, Congress has passed almost 80 tax bills. To understand the impact of this expansive nature of tax regulation lets look at the impact of the "Tax Relief Act of 1997: 285 new sections and 824 amendments. In the early, 20th century the tax code spanned 5.5 million words requiring 17,000 pages.
Tax Reform does not slow the stream of tax revenues going to the government treasury nor does it reduce the tax burdens. Tax Reform codifies administration practices, management decisions, documenting behavior and conduct, and analyzes the execution and application of the internal revenue law. Congress levies taxes. Congress drives the demand for higher taxes. The reform act oversees the execution of the collection of those taxes. The Reform Act of 1998 provides congressional oversight of the IRS restructure through a new entity, the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board.
Accountability to Congress and the President of the United States is done through a new Board of Directors, a Commissioner of Internal Revenue appointed to a few year term, and a National Tax Payer Advocate (Independent from the IRS examination, collections, and appeals functions). The National Tax Payer Advocate eliminates the Chief Inspector and creates a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and reports directly to the Secretary of Treasury.
Tax Reform means better use of technology. The 1998 Tax Reform mandated that the IRS must address training, operations, technology culture, and tax payer education. The IRS was to develop a strategic marketing plan for a paperless filing service. Technology can reduce costs by increasing more self-service by the Tax payer. Convenience and accessibility will appeal to the taxpayer. Technology is a fix cost appropriation and should be measured to improve tax payer satisfaction. Convenient access to information is crucial to the taxpayer.
The Tax Reform does not mean less tax litigation. The reform act claims to shift burden of proof from the taxpayer to the agency. The taxpayer must expense for legal services to fight against injustices. If the tax court rules that the tax payer acted reasonably, tax payers may claim civil damages up to $1 million for the recklessness or intentional wrong doing of the IRS agency. The burden of proof is not decisively shifted from the tax payer to the agency. The taxpayer must still demonstrate and prove recklessness. The agency could argue it was following approved procedures. A federal court would be force to rule on the policies fairiness. The litigation cost would be enormous.
The reform act of 1998 allows the tax payer the right to recover $100,000 for employee negligence, and increases the amount the IRS reimburses taxpayers who prevail in court.
The IRS is required to notify a taxpayer within five days that a lien has been filed against his or her property. The taxpayer has 30 days to request a hearing with an agency appeals officer.
The agency cannot proceed with seizure activity until after the hearing has been held, and a taxpayer who does not like the outcome may take the case to tax court. Tax Reform could mean more tax cases being litigated in tax court.
No seizure of a dwelling that is the principle residence of the taxpayer is allowed without prior judicial approval.
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Cancer of Corruption in a Mountain of Malfeasance, 2003-09-01
Roth's book reveals much about the world's most feared, most hated, most powerful, and most corrupt criminal organization. While some of the material is dated, the underlying problems are still with us.The book, due to its date of publication, doesn't reveal, for example, the OMB finding that IRS employees stole over 4300 government computers in 2001 nor does it reveal the results of a 2003 investigation that shows when they aren't busy stealing computers, IRS employees are spending over half their Internet time at the office visiting porn and gambling sites. Because of the date of the research, Roth doesn't include references to many news articles about how IRS employees devote themselves to terrorizing American citizens, selling confidential information, breaking laws with impunity, and running scams like the famous Hoyt Fiasco (well-documented online).
Yet, the book is very useful and important. In it, Roth reveals how individual managers in the IRS are completely unaccountable to any civil authority. He gives case after case of horrendous abuses.
Roth also reveals the steps taken to reign in some of the abuse, and he explains some things ordinary citizens can do to protect themselves. But he also leaves us with an awareness that the IRS is still too powerful, too unaccountable, and too corrupt.
The book should be required reading. An update is long overdue.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Unbridled Imagination, 2002-05-26
As a later GAO investigation revealed, Senator Roth's 1997 hearings on the IRS were a farce. The witnesses' stories of abuse were exaggerated at best, falsified with the connivance of the Senator and his commitee staff, at worst. His book, ghost written by a staffer, (I didn't know the Senator was literate!) should be listed here under "fiction." Its all bull - pandering to marginal and disaffected losers who wear aluminum foil inside their hats. Thankfully, the good citizens of Delware voted the rascal out in 1999, sending him and his horrible toupee back to the obscurity to which he so deservedly belongs.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Horrifying Problem - Worse Prognosis, 2001-08-23
I read this book as an ancillary to my study of government abuses that primarily focused on the abuses of the Department of Justice. What I found out was that the FBI, ATF and other heavily armed law enforcement agencies that violate our rights from time to time are relative wimps compared to the pervasive and unbelievably egregious wrongs committed by the IRS.
The author of the book is a US Senator that headed a congressional oversight hearing looking into the problems in the IRS from '96 to `99. What he found will make you mad as hell and twice as frustrated. Basically he found out that the IRS has become a law unto itself that has grown into a mean-spirited 800 lb. gorilla that cannot now be controlled under the present form of the law.
Roth admits that this mess is the fault of the Congress in its shameful lack of oversight. He notes that basically Congress has given the IRS increasingly sweeping powers without accountability to the point now that they can break the law with impunity.
The book cites many horrifying anecdotes of IRS abuse of citizens' rights and basic human decency all in the name of "making the numbers". The IRS is nothing more than a legalized gang of shakedown artists who use intimidation, fear and nasty mean-spiritedness to squeeze every penny out of the taxpayer that they see as an enemy that must be brought to its knees.
What I found worse than the realization that the government is basically a criminal organization and that the representatives have allowed it to go on was the fact that they now have limited ability to control or reform the IRS. Like a Frankenstein monster that has broken loose and cannot be controlled, the IRS is now so well equipped with sweeping powers that the courts, Congress and certainly we are helpless to its whim despite so called sweeping IRS reform bills passed by Congress in the last four years.
So, in effect, the author shows us what a mess he and his political cohorts have made over the last fifty or so years and then admits that there isn't a heck of a lot that can be done other than limit your profile so the IRS doesn't notice you in the first place. He also talks about your "rights" and how you should act politely and professionally while the IRS is sticking it in and breaking it off even though the preceding 2/3rd of the book were about how the IRS basically ignores taxpayers' rights. While practical in a clinical sense this advice bothered me because it reminded me of the advice you'll get from cops sometimes regarding crime in general: "just give them what they want and they might not hurt you".
Come on! Why the hell aren't these thugs in jail? How can a US Senate committee sit there and hear this kind of testimony, see the figures and get admissions from the IRS itself that this kind of crud is going on and not start slapping on the cuffs? I was really disgusted by this book and it basically sums up what I feel is wrong with our government in general. Forget about "jack-booted thugs" with machine guns kicking down your door in the middle of the night; worry about some bureaucratic piss ant from the IRS with a calculator deciding that you are an easy mark to make his numbers for the month.
Man, what a mess!
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Much painful truth in a book with title off target, 2001-06-29
A friend just faxed me the review by Robert Cole III Three Cheers for Robert. As valuable as this book is to read, its title prompts me to state this book has the power to mislead. Robert hits the nail on the head. The Federal Crime Family (IRS) does not legally have the power implied by the title of this book. What logic would there be to giving power to an agency to administer their collection tasks under a law based on self assessment and voluntary compliance? The author paid the price of not getting re-elected after five consecutive terms in the Senate.