When it was created, the federal income tax was supposed to be temporary. But it became about as temporary as the common cold virus.
Each winter, it comes back, causing headaches, watery eyes, choking and that old drained-out feeling. We are forced to spend a fortune on remedies that only treat the symptoms.
And now the IRS wants to make the tax virus much worse — by regulating tax preparation services.
Think about it. The original form was one sheet, and could be filled out in a few minutes. The regulations for it were only a few pages. Now IRS-1040 tax regulations fill thousands of pages, with thousands of rules and laws that change at the whim of Congress.
The IRS and Congress have created something so complicated, we are forced to seek outside help to file our taxes and make sure we don’t stray across the often invisible boundaries of tax laws.
And now the IRS wants to regulate the people who help us navigate the minefields — spreading the infection of bureaucracy, complexity and regulatory overkill.
Here’s an idea. The IRS is already given billions of dollars and a small army of enforcers to police compliance. If someone doesn’t comply and the preparation service is at fault, simply apply the rules already in place.
If you’re asking what can possibly accomplished by regulating tax preparation, the answer is two words: control and money.
The federal government will collect even more fees from regulatory licensing, and it will grab even more control over taxpayers, until the hired guns we go to for protection from the IRS are essentially working for the IRS, and the confused taxpayer has nowhere to turn.
I’ve had the misfortune to contact IRS help-lines for advice while attempting to prepare my own taxes. One time I got a different answer every time I called. I concluded that the IRS doesn’t even know what the IRS is doing. They have no business telling anyone else what to do.
Will there be an exemption in the regulations for ACORN and their pedophile tax advice?
Yes, we can count on it. And did you see the story this morning reporting that the IRS doesn’t even answer its own phones for tax help? Great. So now they want to regulate tax preparation. And did you see who is supporting the new regulations? H&R Block, as a way to smother the competition in layers of regulations. Typical. Pretty soon I will need to get a license just to file my OWN taxes.
Your second to last paragraph said it all.
Pete, I know that folks view me as a fool when I bring up Revolution, but NOTHING—-NOTHING will change until we citizens take down the government.
It seems humorous and insane on its face, I fully appreciate that. but we have reached the tipping point where the elites in government and corporations are skimming SO much of the money we workers earn, then use it wastefully and with unbelievable corruption.
Pelosi’s bizarrely luxurious private airliner; Gore’s palatial estate—yet they want to make RULES that only the LITTLE people must adhere to, and thus send MORE of our earnings to them and those like them.
I am not insane Pete. I am a mature health care professional, but it is time to STOP the madness.
Voting people out of office and replacing them with people who become like the ones they replaced is not the answer. The beauracracy and the corrupt machines are too deeply entrenched. All fall prey who go there.
The entire system has to be dissolved and we have to start over.
“Liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants”
Pete, the tyrants are in place.
Now we just need the resolve of patriots.
Well now we know why H&R Block supports the regulation, their guy wrote them:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Revolving-door-spins-at-Obama_s-IRS-8763923-81549747.html