Internal Revenue Service Scandal – The Abolition of the Collectors of Internal Revenue in 1948

Today I saw and heard, on Fox News, IRS exempt organizations director, Lois Lerner, say, after taking the testamentary oath at a House of Representatives Oversight Committee hearing, that she had not done anything wrong. “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations,” and then she took the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Lerner was in danger of criminal prosecution even though she was just a high level employee doing a job invented by Congress. She is guilty of not knowing the difference between a powerless employee and an officer of the United States of America. Since 1952, the employee inmates have run the asylum at the Internal Revenue Taxpayer Service. The customers are finally realizing they don’t have to buy what the IRS is selling.

The history of federal taxation from 1789 to 1948 is told in the United States Government Printing Office publication, “The Work and Jurisdiction of the Bureau of Internal Revenue,” which is available by doing an Internet search on that title. That booklet documents the time in American history when federal taxes were collected by Collectors of Internal Revenue, who had been appointed by the President of the United States of America with the advice and consent of the Senate and who were bonded in an amount determined by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. For an era of 163 years real federal taxes were collected by real federal Collectors of Internal Revenue although the collections were made outside the district where the taxes were owed.

The conservative targeting scandal is a direct result of the abolition of the Collectors of Internal Revenue by IRS Reorganization Plan No.1 of 1952, which took federal tax collection away from sixty-five Collectors of Internal Revenue and handed it to thousands of employees without any government power to collect federal taxes. IRS employees could and did accept payments voluntarily made into the Treasury of the United States. When payments were not volunteered, IRS employees pretended to be Collectors of Internal Revenue.

The employee run Internal Revenue Service evolved from the United States Treasury Department’s government Bureau of Internal Revenue, while Treasury pretended nothing had changed. Thus, was born the longstanding practice, embraced by both Republican and Democratic administrations not to delve into the details of the IRS’s administration and enforcement of federal tax laws.

Mitt Romney vowed to repeal Obamacare when he was elected President, so IRS employees did everything in their power to re-elect Barack Hussein Obama by making difficulties for Obama’s political opponents.

Learning difficult tax law is easier when there are big rewards. Congress wants to know what happened at the IRS. You can teach anyone the law once you learn it. Contact me at edrivera@edrivera.comfor the details.

Dr. Eduardo M. Rivera