Rand Paul - Potential 2016 Presidential Bid

The IRS as an agency wasn't created until 1862, and it didn't become the IRS as we know it until 1918. By your logic, the government couldn't collect taxes prior to 1862.

 

The oil cronies are still in power, wars are still being started that kill our kids and foreign kids, and Halliburton still benefits from those wars.

I'll give you an A for effort with your partisan hackery, but an F in reality. Try again next time.

 

DoT existed for approximately 73 years before the IRS. Clearly, getting rid of the IRS would not get rid of the DoT.

 

Three quarters of the people on this thread are grasping at straws and neglect to present substantive evidence despite all requests for it. They trot out the same information that you did not ask for as though they are a "bot" with access to only so many lines or marketing ploys.

I quit bothering, Thinker. I suggest you do the same.

 

I'm getting there. The assertions that the government will be incapable of collecting taxes without the IRS and that the Treasury will collapse without it was just too much stupid.

 

And they didn't have cars in 1862 either.

 

Was that an attempt to deflect from the absurdity of your position that the government will be unable to collect taxes without an agency that did not even exist until 73 years after the American government started collecting taxes?

 

Sure the government can collect taxes. They will get rid of the IRS and get another one, because they know they will have to set up another agency to collect them. Sort of like taking one good apple out of the bag and picking another one, just like the first. They only difference is, a stupid person would never realize they just worked double to get the same kind of apple.

 

They collected taxes just fine when all they had was the DoT. Why add a redundant agency?

 

No, actually that was an attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of the comment you made comparing the period between when taxes were collected pre- 1862 and afterwards, to the turn of the century with the Industrial revolution coming into it's own. There's a slight difference in the horse and buggy tax collecting days prior to 1862 with only a fraction of the population back then, as it is today. While today, now that we are using modern machines that need more improved road systems in a quicker span of time, which obviously need more expedient means to collect taxes because of the maintenance demand. I doubt your pre 1862 methods of collecting taxes are going to hold up for long. Besides, the horses are going to need to change their shoes out too often on those old paved roads. Can you imagine the overhead expense for the government to have to keep doing that? It's kind of a common sense thing really, to keep the system we have.

 

I'm not suggesting we use the pre-IRS methods of collecting taxes, I'm saying there's no reason to create a completely redundant agency just to update our methods.

 

"They" were our government. Now, back to the question: Why do we need a redundant agency to collect taxes when the DoT is more than qualified to do so?

 

Redundant! Are you kidding me? There's over 300,000,000 million people in this country. I think redundant is the last thing you want to here. "JUST" to update our methods. LOl! "JUST"! That goes along the same logic as, we really don't need roads for all these cars we drive. If we were to get rid of the completely redundant IRS today, we would cease having a functional society. Hindering tax collection would paralyze this country. Logical deductive reasoning, along with a clear thought process, has somehow lost its way for so many, because of the tunnel vision hate for government.

 

At some point, you stopped discussing what I said and went off down the rabbit hole of assumptions. I don't hate government at all. Like traditional liberals, I view it as a necessary evil.

 

Yes, the very necessary evil of changing the name of the IRS to the DOT. You're just consolidating two different agencies into one great big one. And? What did you accomplish other than to combine two agencies that have different functions. The training, the financial expense of the transition would be enormous. It makes no sense to combine two perfectly well operated agencies that perform two totally different functions. It's like combining a team of doctors at an office to work with professional baseball players so they can all do doctor work..

 

Clearly, you are unfamiliar with how the DoT works. I'll be brief:

1) No, I'm not talking about consolidating two agencies into one big one, I'm talking about eliminating a redundant agency.

2) DoT already handles taxes, and always has. The IRS is a child agency of the DoT, everything they do goes through the Treasury.

 

But the work load is the same. If it takes X number of people to handle X number of tax cases in this country, the workload is still the same.

Look, I'm all for cutting costs and making something more efficient, but the number of people paying taxes in this country isn't going to shrink. It's all about the math. And getting rid of the IRS doesn't make good mathematical sense. You're just putting more burden on another agency, to handle more work.

 

I'm not sure why you're not getting this. The DoT is already doing the work, the IRS is part of the DoT. That's why it's redundant. The entire agency is unnecessary, it's just more bloat and waste.

 

What bloat and waste? What is there not to get. You are saying to get rid of the entire agency. Not only does that not make sense, it doesn't solve anything. If you say the DOT is already doing the work, then you aren't "really" getting rid of anything. The IRS branch of this will be gone and the DOT will hire more personnel for the extra work load after the IRS has been axed.. In the meantime the number of people paying taxes will only be greater. You can call it anything you want. But the demand and the workload for the job will never get smaller. You somehow believe in your mind that getting rid of the IRS is somehow going to get rid of a redundant agency and save money by just letting the DOT handle it. Your logic makes no sense. If I have a half acre of grass to cut, and the only way to cut it all is with a lawn mower and a weed eater, but I get rid of the weed eater, then I can't cut all the grass.

 

I fail to see how the IRS is a perfectly operating agency under the current concerns of "“inappropriate and questionable criteria" in targeting and flagging particular groups, while taking 70 million in bonuses? Of course, it seems to me, if we're going to consider the IRS redundant, I would also include The Fed in that as well. Who needs national debt and the taxes on the interest of it when "Congress: has the power to coin money"? Isn't this what the DoT is for and why it is the only constitutional agency under The Constitution that is included in this post?

 

The IRS is nothing more than a subordinate agency of the US Treasury. The US Treasury has been collecting taxes since the United States was created under the US Constitution (or more accurately since 1791 when the first US tax laws went into force).

Complaints about the IRS are really, by analogy, like complaining about what office a worker occupies in a corporate headquarters. Anything the IRS does is an action of the US Treasury.

 

All more or less what I have said. What is your point, exactly?

 

I'm not sure what the $70 million in bonuses refers to but it's really irrelevant. What we do know is that the "inappropriate and questionable criteria" is more partisan BS than actually being a problem. The IRS "BOLO" (Be on lookout) criteria included liberal, conservative and other criteria for IRS agents to look out for. The IRS agents have a delegated responsibility to ensure that 501(c) applicants are not PAC's that are covered under other IRS codes. Not a single application by any group identified by the BOLO criteria has ever been denied 501(c) tax exempt status by the IRS. A few have withdrawn their application presumably because they really were a PAC attempting to hide under 501(c) tax exempt status (in short, good catch by the IRS).. The "conservative" groups that were subjected to additional scrutiny only represented about 1/3rd of all organizations subjected to additional scrutiny and they "complained" while the 2/3rds majority of organizations did not complain about the additional scrutiny which is why it can be identified as a "partisan" complaint as opposed to a legitimate issue of concern.

Yes, the US Treasury has the authority to coin the lawful money of the United States under Article I Section 8 Clause 4 but where is it supposed to get the gold and silver from to coin the money? Currency is not "lawful money" while it is "legal tender" under the US Constitution. "Currency" is a promissory note based upon the authority of Congress to "borrow on the credit of the United States" under Article I Section 8 Clause 1 (Ref Juilliard v Greenman).

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/110/421

 

The IRS, itself, acknowledged that it used unfair scrutiny in flagging groups that contained common key Tea Party words. It wasn't focused on political committees masquerading as 501(c)(4) groups evading public disclosure laws, but it instead delayed tax exemption to specific groups based solely on their names... this obviously costs time and money.

Where does The Fed, or even the centralized banks get the gold and silver to back the credits they issue from the purchase of treasury bonds (repackaged debt)? Is not a credit just a book entry?...
"Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically, a 'dollar' bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries." — Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975

Since central banks can clearly just make book entries, I'm sure congress and the treasury can do the same thing, I just can't vote out any one from the Federal Reserve Board when I think their being idiots.

70 million bonus to IRS