Repackaging the IRS: behind its new customer-friendly facade, the IRS remains riddled with corruption and committed to prosecuting its "war" against taxpayers.

"If we owe you money, we'd like to get it to you," announced Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark W. Everson late last November. "All you have to do is tell us where you are." Everson's winsome invitation came amid a sudden explosion of wire service reports around Thanksgiving describing the IRS's eagerness to deliver missing tax refund checks.

"More than 2,600 Arizonans are owed federal income tax refund checks, but the Internal Revenue Service can't deliver them," reported Arizona's East Valley Tribune on November 23. A report from Staten Island published on the same day garbed the tax collector in the mantle of the beloved St. Nick: "After making a list and checking it twice, the Internal Revenue Service is searching for a small group of (not naughty but nice) Staten Islanders who paid their 2003 income taxes but got coal in their stockings instead of refund checks." "Nationally, close to 90,000 taxpayers are owed $73 million, which is waiting to be delivered," observed the December 9 Big Bear Lake, California, Grizzly. "We are glad to help them get their money," insisted IRS public relations officer Raphael Tulino.

Similar stories--driven by IRS press releases--appeared in newspapers from coast to coast. To borrow an expression from the advertising industry, this was an attempt to "re-brand" the IRS: once notorious for inflicting misery on cash-strapped citizens, the agency was seeking to cast itself as the people responsible for putting money in the pockets of taxpayers.

Ho, ho, ho!

Tactical Feint

Had the fearsome IRS suddenly morphed into a taxpayers' aid society? For decades, IRS agents have been the scourge of law-abiding Americans seeking to protect their hard-earned wealth. This is a case of form following function: as long as the federal government is empowered to collect income taxes, it will also be empowered to pry into every detail of our personal financial affairs, and the agency exercising such awesome powers will, inevitably, be distinguished for its ruthlessness. The IRS has certainly filled that role.

Had the agency replaced its heartless cadres with tenderhearted souls whose brows are furrowed with anguish over the thought that somewhere there are innocent Americans deprived of their deserved tax refunds? Cynical observers would contend that the IRS's theatrical concern over undelivered refund checks was a tactical feint intended to distract the public. And they would be right.

To the cynic, the fundamental question is this: what's in it for the IRS? The obvious answer is found in Commissioner Everson's invitation to taxpayers seeking refund checks: "All you have to do is tell us where you are." Understood in the context of the IRS's "Four Protocols," Everson's supposed invitation actually hides an implicit threat.

Former IRS revenue officer Richard Yancey describes the "Four Protocols," also known as "the rules we may not say," in his revealing new memoir, Confessions of a Tax Collector:

* Find where they are.

* Track what they do.

* Learn what they have.

* Execute what they fear.

The fourth protocol, naturally, is "enforcement," or the seizure and sale of taxpayer property, and to enforce IRS collections, the IRS needs to know where people live, hence the "invitation." It is in executing the dreadful fourth protocol--not the diligent delivery of unclaimed refunds--that an IRS agent finds the key to career advancement.

To carry out the first three protocols, Yancey explains, the IRS employs a computer database called the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS. Those provided with IDRS access codes are granted great power:

   With an IDRS password, you had access
   to information that no one else
   had access to, not the president of the
   United States, not the CIA.... The implications
   of access to IDRS are staggering.
   Give me your name and in
   thirty seconds I would have your Social
   Security number. Give me your
   Social Security number and in five
   minutes I would know how old you
   were, where you lived, what you did
   for a living, how many children you
   have, how many times you've been
   married, how much you make, what
   your investments are, if you are generous,
   sick, permanently disabled, or
   recently relocated.... For most people,
   this means I would know more about
   them than they know themselves.

The IRS also intimidates innocent people into acting as informants, exploiting their prurient interests, petty grievances, or insecurities to induce them to provide the needed personal information.

"No one likes to hear this, but your neighbor is not your friend," writes Yancey. "All I [have] to do [is] flash my commission and [I'll get] your life story.... Your neighbor is going to tell the IRS where you work, how long you've worked there, what kind of car you drive, what kind of jewelry you wear, what kind of valuable collections might be stored in your attic, what kind of people you associate with, and where your kids go to school. If you've moved from another city or state, they'll tell us where you're from, how long you've been at your present address, and if you have any plans for moving in the future. Drink a little too much? Seeing a psychologist? Had an abortion? Faking a disability? We'll know. And most of the time, we won't even have to ask."

Dehumanizing the Taxpayer

As Yancey points out, the IRS literally considers itself to be at war with the taxpaying American public. "This is war," Yancey was told by a superior early in his career. "Surely this simple truth has occurred to you at some point in the past six months. You are at war."

"The language of war and the culture of conflict are the only means to prepare us for what is expected of us," reflects the former revenue officer. "How else could they demand what was expected of us? You can't take their life savings, their car, their paycheck, the roof over their head and the heads of their children, without dehumanizing them, without casting yourself in a role that by necessity makes them the enemy."

In 1997, IRS agent Jennifer Long testified to Congress that IRS management teaches its agents to use "tactics--which appear nowhere in the IRS manual ... to extract unfairly assessed taxes from taxpayers, literally ruining families, lives, and businesses--all unnecessarily and sometimes illegally." The following year, former IRS District Chief David Patnoe admitted: "More tax is collected by fear and intimidation than by the law. People are afraid of the IRS."

In his 2000 book 'feeling your pain,' investigative author James Bovard describes a 1996 videotaped lecture by an IRS instructor for the Arkansas-Oklahoma district, training a group of revenue officers:

   Make them cry. We don't give points
   around here for being good scouts.
   The word is "enforced." If that's not
   tattooed on your forehead, or somewhere
   else, then you need to get it.
   Enforcement. Seizure and sales.
   That's our mind-set....   You're not out
   there to take any prisoners. Prisoners
   are like an installment agreement.
   They have to be fed and clothed and
   housed. All that stuff. They're expensive.
   We're not here to do that.
   If you've got an assessment, enforce
   collection until they come to their
   knees.

The IRS personnel Yancey describes begin as typical American citizens. But once initiated into the agency's culture of impunity, they become furtive, arrogant, and self-serving. They have the power to impoverish and imprison practically any American taxpayer, since the tax code is riddled with ambiguities that can make a "tax cheat" out of the most scrupulous citizen.

To enforce that code against fellow Americans, IRS revenue officers must be remade in the agency's image. They are in-doctrinated to believe that they are an elite caste, superior to the profane human beings who surround them. On his first day at work in Lakeside, Florida, Yancey took an oath to uphold the Constitution--and then got an immediate taste of the service ethic of his new employer. Referring to taxpayers, one of Yancey's supervisors indulged in a profane rant that ended with the observation, "Deadbeats ... if it were up to me, I'd line 'em all up against a wall and shoot them."

In recent years--prompted, in large measure, by 1998 congressional hearings into IRS abuses--the agency has announced its intention to develop a "customer service" ethic. This concept makes a bad fit, given that the IRS's business is plundering its "customers." The IRS referring to a citizen as a "customer" is exactly like a rapist calling his victim his "lover."

In any case, as Yancey documents, the IRS doesn't recognize that taxpayers have any legitimate rights or interest that the government must respect. During an early training session that Yancey attended, new employees were informed that the IRS had no use for "those who anguished over each closure, as if their decision meant life or death for the taxpayer." When one trainee objected that the IRS's actions do mean life and death for the taxpayer, the trainer explained that the agency's mission had nothing to do with "doing the right thing for the taxpayer.... One of the critical elements of your job is 'protecting the government's interest.' You are a federal agent, not a public advocate." "But what if the government's interest is wrong?" persisted the trainee. "Our interest is never wrong or right," came the trainer's reply. "It just is."

Targeting the Innocent

Misery, it is said, loves company, and Americans made miserable by their tax burden generally spare no sympathy for tax cheats. But it must be understood that the IRS has ruined the lives of many thousands of perfectly innocent Americans who have done their level best to comply with the tax code. Here are just a few examples:

* In 1995, 15 heavily armed IRS agents wearing bulletproof vests raided the office of Sun Valley Realty in Sunriver, Oregon. Half a dozen others, similarly clad, stormed the home of the owner, James Montgomery. After a three-hour search the agents lugged away 50 boxes of documents. The raid was triggered by a confidential informant, who fingered Montgomery as a tax cheat as part of a plea agreement. Despite finding nothing to incriminate Montgomery, the IRS harassed him for several years, during which time the distracted realtor's business fell apart.

* Carole Ward, a middle-aged Colorado Springs businesswoman, provoked the wrath of an IRS agent during a meeting in 1993 by making a disparaging comment about his accounting skills. Three weeks later, IRS agents laid siege to Ward's three clothing stores, insisting that she owed more than a third of a million dollars in back taxes. They froze her bank accounts, seized the stores and their inventory, and told some of her customers that Ward was suspected of drug smuggling. They also tried to seize the house owned by Ward's elderly mother. An examination later showed that Ward owed roughly one percent of the assessment, about $3,000. But although Ward was willing to pay that amount, the IRS refused to let her pay--until she signed an agreement promising not to sue the IRS for its criminal conduct in her case. To pressure Ward into signing that agreement, IRS District Director Gerald Swanson smeared her in the media, making illegal use of private information from her tax return. Ward lost her lease on one store. IRS agents pawing through her cash register brazenly stole nearly $3,500--an amount sufficient to cover the actual tax assessment. Amazingly, Ward won a lawsuit against the IRS in 1997, receiving $325,000 in punitive and compensatory damages. "The unfortunate aspect of the Carole Ward case is that it gives people the mistaken impression that there is some actual recourse," commented Bob Kammen of the National Taxpayers Union. But "you have to assume that for every case like that where there are damages awarded, there are 50 to 100 problem cases where the advice to the client is: you cannot afford to take on the federal government."

* Retired fireman Tom Savage, who ran a prison construction firm in Wilmington, Delaware, hired a subcontractor who had gotten into tax trouble. In 1993, an IRS agent filed paperwork to create a new partnership between Savage and the targeted subcontractor--and then ordered Savage to pay $315,000 in taxes for that fictitious partnership. Before Savage could take legal action, the IRS illegally seized a $145,000 check from the state of Delaware to Savage. Faced with the destruction of his company and personal ruin, Savage consented to let the IRS keep $50,000 of the money it had stolen from him. Although $95,000 was returned to Savage, he spent more than $160,000 in legal costs and had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business. As of 2000, he was still working to pay off the legal debts he had incurred in his battle against the IRS's financial terrorists. "All this time and you are scared to death," he recalled. "[The IRS agents] didn't give a damn. They were acting illegally. They knew it. And they didn't care.... They can come and take your home away and you have no say."

New Powers, New Threats

Granted, these cases occurred before the IRS announced its new "customer service" ethic. But they pointedly remind us of the organization's true nature, which persists in spite of its attempt to affect good manners. After all, it's hardly progress if a cannibal learns to use a knife and fork.

There's reason to believe that the IRS will soon ditch its "customer-friendly" facade. Last November--while newspapers coast to coast described IRS efforts to deliver misplaced tax refunds--President Bush signed a measure expanding the IRS's power to track down and harass taxpayers. Tucked away in the more than 3,000 pages of an omnibus spending bill, grandly named the "American Jobs Creation Act," was a provision authorizing the IRS to hire private debt collection agencies to collect an estimated $13 billion in unpaid taxes.

Once again, this is simply a matter of form following function. Until the 16th Amendment, which in 1913 gave Congress the power to tax income, is repealed, and federal spending is reduced to constitutionally sound dimensions, the IRS--or a similarly loathsome agency--will exist.