How stupid laws create administrative chaos
Sympathy for the IRS
By Clive Crook - Bloomberg, May 21, 2013
Much to my surprise, I find myself sympathizing with the Internal Revenue Service. Tenderness toward that agency isn’t my default position. I’m a British expat living in the U.S., with retirement savings locked up in the U.K. and other cross-border entanglements -- these small complications have sometimes caused my dealings with tax professionals to displace landscape photography as my main and most expensive pastime. Say “IRS” to me and watch my teeth grind.
On the other hand, I used to be a civil servant, so I also understand how stupid laws can create administrative chaos. The more I read about the scandal of the IRS and its scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, the more convinced I am that the blame for this mess -- just like the blame for my having to put down my tripod -- lies almost entirely with Congress.
Plainly, if IRS officials were systematically discriminating against conservative groups with the aim of harassing or suppressing them, that’s outrageous, not to mention criminal. If this was going on at the direction or with the knowledge of the White House, then the scandal rises, of course, to Watergate proportions. But there’s no evidence of any such system or conspiracy, and the idea seems improbable. What we do have, though, are tax laws so complex, and so muddled with the regulation of political spending, that straightforward enforcement is almost impossible.
Big Mistake
The rules controlling tax-exempt status for any kind of nonprofit group are bewildering enough (if you have a few days to kill, try making sense of the IRS’s nontechnical guide to the issue). Yet the intersection of these rules with equally arcane U.S. campaign-finance laws raises the problem to a whole other level. Congress made the really big mistake in all this by mixing the two. Administration of the tax code should be kept separate from regulation of money in politics.
(More here.)
By Clive Crook - Bloomberg, May 21, 2013
Much to my surprise, I find myself sympathizing with the Internal Revenue Service. Tenderness toward that agency isn’t my default position. I’m a British expat living in the U.S., with retirement savings locked up in the U.K. and other cross-border entanglements -- these small complications have sometimes caused my dealings with tax professionals to displace landscape photography as my main and most expensive pastime. Say “IRS” to me and watch my teeth grind.
On the other hand, I used to be a civil servant, so I also understand how stupid laws can create administrative chaos. The more I read about the scandal of the IRS and its scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, the more convinced I am that the blame for this mess -- just like the blame for my having to put down my tripod -- lies almost entirely with Congress.
Plainly, if IRS officials were systematically discriminating against conservative groups with the aim of harassing or suppressing them, that’s outrageous, not to mention criminal. If this was going on at the direction or with the knowledge of the White House, then the scandal rises, of course, to Watergate proportions. But there’s no evidence of any such system or conspiracy, and the idea seems improbable. What we do have, though, are tax laws so complex, and so muddled with the regulation of political spending, that straightforward enforcement is almost impossible.
Big Mistake
The rules controlling tax-exempt status for any kind of nonprofit group are bewildering enough (if you have a few days to kill, try making sense of the IRS’s nontechnical guide to the issue). Yet the intersection of these rules with equally arcane U.S. campaign-finance laws raises the problem to a whole other level. Congress made the really big mistake in all this by mixing the two. Administration of the tax code should be kept separate from regulation of money in politics.
(More here.)
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