How you can resist funding the government → about the IRS and U.S. tax law/policy → IRS incompetence → enforcement effort/results → IRS Oversight Board reports on

The IRS Oversight Board just released its annual report. One section caught my eye:

Integrity and Service are Both Needed to Boost Voluntary Compliance

Our system of tax administration is based on the premise that taxpayers will self-assess their tax obligations, file their taxes honestly, and pay what they owe on their own initiative. For taxpayers to achieve higher levels of tax compliance voluntarily, they must first regard tax compliance as an expected social norm, an obligation they are expected to meet.

Secondly, taxpayers must have the information available to them to make their tax obligations easy to understand and fulfill. The IRS does little to stress the need for integrity in the self-assessment process, yet the Oversight Board’s annual taxpayer attitude survey found strong support for personal integrity as a principal factor in paying taxes honestly. The survey found that 86 percent of respondents cite personal integrity as a principal factor influencing whether they report and pay their taxes honestly.

The IRS needs to find ways to leverage this strong support of voluntary compliance as a critical civic duty. It must remind taxpayers that tax compliance is a “social norm” expected of every taxpayer, much like obeying laws against shoplifting or drunk driving, and that noncompliance with taxes hurts our great nation. Such campaigns can have a long-term effect on public opinion, such as that wages by Mothers Against Drunk Driving to reduce the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities. In a similar vein, the Motion Picture Association of America created an aggressive campaign that equaled downloading music or movies illegally with stealing.

The Board is particularly concerned that the tax compliance message be reinforced with America’s young people. All members of the tax administration community can help disseminate this message. For example, the National Society of Tax Professionals (NSTP) is receiving high marks for its “Teaching Taxes to High School Students.” This presentation could be an excellent candidate for the IRS and NSTP to partner and create a similar product on the national level.

Some news of interest from hither and yon:

• Joe Maizlish of Southern California War Tax Resistance was on Radio Adelaide’s Breakfast with Peter Godfrey a few days ago.
• Lawrence M. Ludlow has an interesting take on the “Render unto Cæsar” koan. He thinks Jesus was just making a joke:

  I believe that the statement contains both humorous ridicule and a meaningless poke at his critics. First, Jesus was clearly ridiculing his accusers when he led them to assume that the presence of Caesar’s likeness and inscription on the coin proved that Caesar held a title of ownership to that coin and that the tax should be paid. One might just as well claim that the picture of a Quaker wearing a blue hat on every box of Quaker Oats oatmeal “proves” that the Quaker owns every box of oatmeal that features his likeness on it. Likewise, the image of George Washington on a U.S. quarter dollar does not mean that George owns every such coin or that we should pay taxes because of it. It seems obvious that Jesus was making the same kind of joke with reference to the denarius. I can almost hear the laughter. Can you?

  Further, the statement “Render to Caesar…” is completely circular and therefore conveys no actionable information whatsoever. If a man named Tom and a second man named Bill were both claiming ownership of the same bicycle, would it really help to resolve their dispute if a judge in a court of law declared that what was Tom’s was Tom’s and what was Bill’s was Bill’s? I don’t think so. Again, Jesus was clearly playing games with his opponents — delivering a meaningless poke that successfully confused them.

• The IRS Oversight Board released its annual report on April 15^th. I skimmed it and found one factoid I thought was worth marking: According to the report, it costs the IRS an average of $317,100 to win a criminal conviction.
• J.M. Henrietta of Charlottesville, Virginia announced her tax resistance today to readers of the Charlottesville Daily Progress:

  I have decided that I cannot, with good conscience, continue to contribute to the greed and war-based economy of our country.

  I cannot rest any longer, knowing my tax dollars are helping to contribute to the maiming and killing of innocent people around the world in wars based on lies from our leaders.

  I cannot stand the thought of my hard-earned tax dollars going to line the pockets of greedy or irresponsible financial executives and ignorant U.S. automobile manufacturers who’ve for too long made gas-guzzling behemoths partly responsible for the oil addiction of this country. I cannot support outlaw politicians who are free to trample our Constitution without any consequences.

  I have discussed national issues with my family, friends and acquaintances, written and called my representatives in Congress, petitioned and marched in protests. Still, I feel like I need to do more.

  Therefore, this year I am withholding a part of my federal income tax in protest. Our 75-year-old War Tax Resister’s League estimates that about 20 percent of your taxes this year will go to the current war expense and a much larger part toward paying for previous wars.

  In lieu of my payment to the IRS, I will be increasing my support to the local charities, especially our area food bank, which has been extremely overburdened recently by our poor state of the war-based economy. God help America!

• This dispatch from War Resisters League Asheville [North Carolina] discusses the group’s tax day efforts, including leafletting and joining in at the local Tea Party protest.
• Daphne Muller of Demockracy covers this year’s various tax day protests, in an article that ends with this ridiculously cowering “editor’s note”:

  The author of this article and the editors of this Web site do not in any way advocate for, endorse, or condone any act of tax resisting or tax evasion. We recognize that these activities are potentially illegal and subject to strict fines and penalties, including possible jail time. For more information on specifics of tax penalties and tax law, we encourage you to consult with a tax expert, such as a tax account [sic] or tax attorney. The names of quoted individuals were changed at the request of the editor.

The IRS Oversight Board’s Annual Report to Congress covering 2011 is out.

There’s not too much to report of interest here. The report talks ominously if vaguely about “a breaking point” at which the moribund agency budget combined with Congress’s enthusiasm for loading up the tax code with greater complexity, leads to “serious problems” with “adverse national repercussions.” But there’s little payoff in terms of details.

One table gives a vivid picture of the boom in identity theft based tax fraud:

The IRS receives hundreds of thousands of identity theft complaints each year, and has set up a special office to deal with them, giving this office a staff of 440 people — “a large drain on the IRS service staff” that nonetheless leaves the agency “still struggling to effectively manage identity theft cases.”