Time for the IRS to Come Clean
September 30, 2015 in Economics
Michael F. Cannon
A congressional oversight committee recently renewed its request for documents from an ethically suspect Internal Revenue Service, which ignores such requests with impunity. But this time, the Supreme Court has taken away the agency’s excuse for not cooperating.
In 2014, the IRS began imposing the individual and employer mandates on 70 million Americans even though the Affordable Care Act expressly exempts them from those taxes. The IRS may impose the disputed taxes, the ACA explains, only “through an Exchange established by the State.” The IRS ignored that plain language and imposed those taxes on 70 million taxpayers in the 38 states that did not establish a health insurance Exchange.
This past June, the Supreme Court issued one of its worst decisions in recent memory. In King v. Burwell, the Court rewrote and expanded the ACA in order to save the IRS’s extra-legal taxes, and hundreds of billions of dollars of related spending.
As Chief Justice John Roberts explained, “the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from” what all nine justices agreed is “the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.” Ironically, after invoking the ACA’s broader context to justify ignoring its operative text, Roberts then ignored the many elements of the act’s context that flatly contradict his interpretation.
“For four years, the IRS has been stonewalling Congress’ efforts to determine what agency officials knew.”
Just as the IRS imposed never-legislated taxes and spending by regulation, the Court did so via judicial opinion. The result is that Americans are living under an illegitimate law, paying taxes and underwriting government spending that no Congress ever authorized.
An important question remains, however. Congressional investigators found evidence suggesting that IRS officials imposed those taxes even though they understood that the ACA flatly denies them any authority to do so. Yet for four years, the IRS has been stonewalling Congress’ efforts to determine what agency officials knew.
In 2012, the House’s oversight committee requested documents related to the IRS’s decision to expand the reach of these taxes. IRS officials provided no substantive documents.
Under continued pressure, IRS officials allowed investigators to view certain documents “in camera.” Ironically, that means the investigators could read the documents, but take no notes and make no copies. It was in these documents that investigators nonetheless found evidence that IRS officials knew the ACA prohibited them from imposing the disputed taxes.
The committee again …read more
Source: OP-EDS
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