Posted on 06/16/2013 10:50:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Americans already are fearful and confused about the sweeping changes that ObamaCare will inflict, and the widening IRS scandal deepens concerns about the agency’s major role in implementing and enforcing the health overhaul law.
The authority granted to the IRS over ObamaCare’s mandates, taxes, penalties, reporting, and other requirements is unprecedented. Based upon Government Accountability Office data, we count 46 new responsibilities assigned to the IRS.
The IRS is directed to collect more than $1 trillion in taxes to fund the law, distribute trillions of dollars of subsidies, enforce compliance with the law’s many mandates, and collect information on citizens’ income, employment, health status, etc., and share it with other agencies of the government.
IRS officials have acknowledged the challenges this presents to an agency whose main responsibility is raising revenues to fund the federal government, not to implement a vast new social welfare program. In March, an official from the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, J. Russell George, testified before the House Appropriations Committee about the tax implications of ObamaCare.
“It is unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function,” George said. Americans will have many questions about their taxes because of health care penalties or credits, flooding already busy call-in and walk-in tax help centers. “This is going to lead to problems, sir,” he testified.
The IRS needs to hire thousands more agents and auditors to enforce and implement ObamaCare. Over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the agency will need up to $10 billion more in funding as a result. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has calculated that the IRS will hire an additional 16,500 agents, based upon the agency’s added funding requests.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Can Congress abolish the entire IRS, rather than just lower their funding? If not, then reduce the allotment to that org to zero, nada, not a red cent to them.
...and while they are at it they can de-fund the NSA.
(Dear alphabets—nananananana)
RE: Can Congress abolish the entire IRS, rather than just lower their funding?
They can, but consider the hurdles:
1) It will be DOA when it reaches Senate.
2) Even if it PASSES both houses, Obama still has the veto pen.
3) They’ll have to find a way to replace the IRS since SOMEONE has to collect revenue.
I think the proposal made by Greg Richards of American Thinker would be a more practical FIRST STEP.
We agree that the nation must have a revenue collection agency. So, how to restructure the IRS?
As a first cut, perhaps the new agency would have six regional and independent divisions. They would be located in offices around the country, and there would be no single IRS commissioner in Washington.
The six agency heads would report to Congress every six months on the activities of their agencies on penalty of perjury. There would be new offices of ombudsman for each regional agency. The ombudsmen would testify to Congress along with the agency heads every six months as to the number and type of complaints they had received and what had been the disposition of those complaints.
All salaries in the new six agencies would start at 10% below the equivalent levels in the current IRS. There would be no union in the six agencies, because the agencies must represent the interests of the country and that alone.
Something like that.
Forbes arguing for destroying the IRS... sounds like the Cloward-Piven strategy is being implemented quite well... :-(
Only problem is....our current RINO-led Congress is fully complicit in the leftist takeover of the USA (See: Amnesty being pushed by Boehner and Co.). If they were ever going to defund Obamacare, they would have already.
Sorry to burst your bubble of delusion.
We on the right are effectively screwed.... good & plenty.
Not a bad idea, except if we’re going to keep the IRS at all I’d go with 58 independent regional divisions - one per state plus one for all other areas such as DC.
if healthcare is a right, why do I have to pay for it
The MSM won't care. They'll dance on the graves of our young children and brag about their superiority - based on knowing where to get the best coffee...
The New York Times won't want to report on the story - preferring to focus on two people who used the "N" word in Palm Springs... six months back - while delivering pizza. They won't care that millions of conservatives and their children were denied medical care.. But they'll begrudgingly give it a two day run.
The IRS will continue with their program of bias against conservatives knowing that absolutely nothing happened to them 'last time'.
Elections matter...
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