I rarely think of the Internal Revenue Service as a “service:” when it takes my money, I don’t think the agency is serving me. But in this case, it really did perform a service: It reminded us of who its agents are and of the fact that they are willing to use deadly force “if necessary.”
Various other commenters have noted that this is not something new. For many years, the IRS has had about 2,000 agents who carry guns and are willing to use deadly force. I knew that. Maybe you knew that. But a lot of people probably didn’t.
This is from my latest TaxBytes piece for the Institute for Policy Innovation. It’s titled, “The IRS Shows Its Guns,” IPI, August 17, 2022.
Read the whole thing, which is very short.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 21 2022 at 8:25am
I DO think of the IRS as a service. They make sure (surer now with more auditors, etc.) that other people follow the law as I do. I also approve of (more) police officers deterring and apprehending criminals [see Tabarrok]. I also think it is OK for law officers to carry guns; it’s armatures that worry me.
Adam M
Aug 21 2022 at 4:39pm
So you never support civil disobedience under any circumstance? How do you square that with, for example, the declaration of independence?
Jose Pablo
Aug 22 2022 at 8:01pm
You seem to believe that “forcing” your neighbor to pay his “legal” taxes (as you do) should require the same kind of use of force that “forcing” your neighbor to not shoot and kill you.
One could be entitled to believe so since you think (or it seems so) that both are “criminals” that should be deterred with a deadly use of force …
Proportionality should be a key element in “deterring and apprehending criminals“, don’t you think?
Killing somebody for making the Federal deficit slightly worse … I don’t know.
David Seltzer
Aug 21 2022 at 6:35pm
The verbs shall and will pepper federal and state regulations and laws. They are reinforced with the threat of deadly force.
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