Facts about the Internal Revenue Service:
The IRS has 95,000 employees.
It’s the fifth largest government agency.
The US Tax Code has 1,997 different tax forms.
The tax code consists of 3.7 million words on 73,954 pages.
Over 3.8 billion hours are spent annually complying with the tax code.
In 2012, $6.7 billion in taxes was not collected – IRS couldn’t find the taxpayers.
The IRS issued $4 billion in fraudulent refunds to criminals using stolen identities.
The IRS paid $1 million in bonuses to employees who didn’t pay their federal taxes.
Federal employees owe a total of $3.3 billion in back taxes to the federal government.
It’s pretty easy to see that the Internal Revenue Service is huge, complicated and inefficient. The large numbers of employees are not very good at doing their job. In all fairness, the IRS does not write the tax code, Congress does. The IRS just executes it. It just doesn’t do it very well. But because of the size and complexity of the tax code, is it even possible to execute well? Probably not. All the more reason to scrap the current income tax and change to the Fair Tax.
In a nutshell, the Fair Tax completely does away with the current Income Tax and the IRS and replaces it with a national sales tax. You pay federal taxes when you spend money. Certain necessities would be exempt from the tax. People living below a predetermined income level would receive a monthly rebate for their taxes paid. My favorite part of the Fair Tax: employers can’t pay employees under the table; gamblers pay taxes on their winnings and criminals pay taxes on their ill-gotten gain.
More info available at: Fair Tax
But what do we do with the 95,000 employees of the IRS? I propose the ones with the proper experience, education and are not behind on their taxes are transferred to the NEW Internal Auditing Agency! We need to establishment a Federal agency whose mission is to audit EVERY federal agency, EVERY year and post the results on the internet for all to see. The GSA would no longer be able to hide million dollar seminars in Las Vegas with hotel suites and hot tubs in their budget. Program managers will have to spend their money wisely because the whole country will be watching. We need to get away from the days of spending every penny you are allocated in order to get more money to spend next year.
The Army used to have a program where soldiers could suggest ways to do things better and cheaper. If that suggestion resulted in saving money, the soldier received a small percentage of that savings. Program managers shouldn’t receive a bonus unless they successfully complete their mission and do it within budget. If they come in under budget and return money to the Treasury Department, they should receive a percentage of that amount.