Reforming (and Saving) the IRS by Respecting the Public's Right to Know
The current controversy involving possible political targeting by the IRS in administering the exempt organization (EO) tax laws is simply the latest in a long succession of similar allegations spanning at least five decades. This article proposes to address the problem through increased transparency of the IRS’s administrative actions involving EOs. Greater transparency responds directly to the public’s frustration in not being able to monitor the agency and gain confidence that the laws are being applied in an even-handed manner.Proposals to increase the transparency of government commonly confront some claimed governmental interest in secrecy, such as a national security or law enforcement concern. Transparency of the government’s tax decisions, however, encounters the further problem that it violates the privacy rights of taxpayers. This latter clash arises because the government’s tax administration decisions generally turn on the information it has extracted under compulsion from taxpayers. Thus, meaningful transparency of one (the government’s tax decisions) almost necessarily requires meaningful transparency of the other (taxpayer tax return information). Fortunately, Congress has long recognized good policy reasons to make public a substantial amount of EO tax return information. Thus, slight liberalizations of the existing disclosure rules for such information may allow sufficient transparency to satisfy the public’s right to know in the precise area of the law that has generated the most controversy. Opening up more EO tax return information and IRS EO decision-making to public scrutiny would tend to deter IRS misbehavior, reduce suspicions of such misconduct, and promote fuller communication both to establish any impropriety and avert false charges against the agency.
Protecting Taxpayers from Congressional Lawbreaking
Introduction Current law generally prohibits the disclosure of tax return information by the government. A violation of this law is a misdemeanor, and a willful violation is a felony. The law exists to protect the privacy interests of taxpayers and reflects a Congressional policy concern dating back at least as early as 1870. This article describes how the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee—“arguably the most powerful panel on Capitol Hill”—broke this law in 2014 when it voted to allow confidential tax return information of 51 taxpayers to be made public. The disclosure probably resulted in a minimal invasion of the privacy rights of the taxpayers involved, and if the release had occurred inadvertently, it might have been overlooked altogether. But the disclosure was not inadvertent. Advised that a document he wanted to release to the public contained confidential tax return information, the chairman of the committee convened a markup session for the specific purpose of debating and authorizing the release. The chairman contended that an obscure provision in the tax law, available only to the Congressional tax committees and apparently rarely invoked in its 90-year history (most recently in connection with a bipartisan decision in 1974 to release a staff report investigating President Nixon’s taxes), provided the necessary support for the committee’s action. Following the debate, the committee voted strictly along party lines to approve the chair’s recommended action.
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People
This is a story of rumour, charity, vengeance, and restraint. "American Insurgents, American Patriots" reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception. A few celebrated figures in the Continental Congress do not make for a revolution. It requires tens of thousands of ordinary men and women willing to sacrifice, kill, and be killed. Breen not only tells the history of these ordinary Americans but, drawing upon a wealth of rarely seen documents, restores their primacy to America's road to independence. Mobilizing two years before the Declaration of Independence, American insurgents in all thirteen colonies concluded that resistance to British oppression required organized violence against the state. They channeled popular rage through elected committees of safety and observation, which before 1776 were the heart of American resistance. "American Insurgents, American Patriots" is the stunning account of their insurgency, without which there would have been no independent republic as we know it.