Senator Barbara Boxer’s MAP-21 is headed to the House after clearing the Senate last month. Boxer’s bill allows the federal government to revoke the passports of citizens the IRS claims owe taxes.
“There is no requirement that the tax payer be guilty of or even charged with tax evasion, fraud, or any criminal offense — only that the citizen is alleged to owe the IRS b
In other words, the Fourth Amendment will become irrelevant in many taxes cases if this legislation makes it through the House. MAP-21 does, however, face opposition by some Republicans. In order to blunt criticism, Boxer’s bill is being portrayed in standard class warfare fashion – according to CBS and others, the law will be used to go after wealthy tax scofflaws who owe the IRS $50,000 or more, so the average citizen need not worry.
In fact, the IRS routinely leans on the little guy and small business owners. For instance, in 2010 the owner of a car wash in Sacramento, California, was harassed by the IRS after the government said he owed four cents in back taxes (which became $200 after three years of penalties and fees).
The IRS is also used by the establishment as a political weapon, as various Tea Party organizations around the country recently learned.
“In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various local Tea Parties across the country,” writes Colleen Owens. The federal wealth confiscation agency asked the political groups to identify their volunteers and donors. “What possible reason would the IRS have for Tea Parties to ‘name your donors’ when said donations are non-deductible?” Owens notes (most Tea Party organizations are nonprofit 501(c)(4) and donations are not deductible).
Chief Justice John Marshall once observed that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy” and that is precisely what the government often attempts to do, as former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio discovered in 2010.
The IRS is no longer strictly about taxes. “Top IRS officials have been working with Democrats on Capitol Hill to determine how the agency will enforce President Obama’s new health care law. Republican lawmakers estimate the legislation will require the hiring of many thousands of new (and armed) tax enforcement agents,” Fox News reported last month. “Under the new law, the IRS is required to fine taxpayers thousands of dollars if they do not purchase health insurance. In order for the government to enforce compliance, tax authorities will need information, for the first time, about people’s health care. Collecting that data will require more IRS personnel.”
In short, the IRS will act as an enforcer – armed to the teeth – for Obamacare, that is if it is not ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June.
The IRS is but one component of an increasingly tyrannical and militarized federal government.
“The Department of Homeland Security recently stoked concern by contracting a company to provide them with 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets. Now the federal agency is also purchasing bullet-proof checkpoint booths that include ‘stop and go’ lights,” writes Paul Joseph Watsontoday. “The purpose behind the bullet proof booths is unknown, but the DHS has publicly announced that it plans to increase the number of unannounced checkpoints manned by TSA VIPR teams and other federal agents beyond the 9,300 that were set up last year alone.”
The IRS move on supposed tax scofflaws by denying them the ability to travel abroad is part of a larger effort to control the movement of citizens in the same way citizens in the Soviet Union were forced under propiska laws to ask the government for permission to travel – and exiled dissidentswere forced to live in isolated far-flung towns under virtual house arrest.
As we noted in 2011, an internal passport for Americans is codified under the December 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. If fully implemented, Ron Paul has warned, it will allow “the government to establish a Soviet-style internal passport system” that would subject “every citizen to surveillance and screening points” of the sort the DHS is now expanding across America.
Not a bad idea, specially for those recurrent tax cheaters in Puerto Rico. You know, the usual suspects.
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