Wednesday, September 6, 2000

[Editor's note: The Citizen almost never prints anonymous letters. We are making an exception in this instance.]

I am writing in response to Chuck James' letter about an e-mail he received stating that a bill currently making its way through Congress would require handgun users to register all of their firearms on their Form 1040 for the 2000 tax year.
It is obvious that he did not take time to actually visit the web page and read the text of the legislation for himself. This is actually a bill to amend laws already on the books relating to taxes that all handgun users already pay when they register a weapon, and making minor changes to the forms that gun sellers have been required to file for years.
These changes have absolutely nothing to do with placing additional registration requirements on gun owners. They are being made to: (1) refine the definitions of a firearm, (2) clarify ambiguous wording in the original legislation, (3) make firearms transfer records available online to federal and local law enforcement agencies, and (4) make blank registration forms available online.
As we all should remember from our high-school civics lessons, the reason the Internal Revenue Code is even mentioned in this is that any laws enacted by Congress dealing with the collection of tax revenue are contained in the IR Code. Mr. James should become more familiar with the way laws are enacted and carried out in this country. The Congress of the United States makes the laws, and Congress created the IRS to carry out the laws pertaining to the collection of taxes, in the same way that they created the Defense Department to defend our country, and the DEA to enforce drug laws.
The IRS is not an evil entity operating on its own to suppress the rights of American citizens. The IRS is made up of a lot of very hard-working individuals who are just trying to make an honest living and feed their families like everyone else, and I'm one of those individuals. I have worked with the IRS for over 20 years, and not once have I seen or heard of anyone attacking, threatening, or harming a taxpayer.
Even the stories which were so highly publicized last year in the Congressional hearings were found later (by the Government Accounting Office, not the IRS) to have been groundless. (Washington Post, April 24, 2000 and Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2000). The only bad thing about working for the IRS is that you get audited every year.
These bogus and inflammatory e-mails are created to intentionally enrage people and boost the membership of the many antigovernment groups which seem to be proliferating in this country. I hope Mr. James didn't fire off a check to his favorite government hate group to help them fight this evil plot!
Unfortunately for those of us who work at the IRS, rumors such as this also serve to enrage people who have a more malicious intent. During the time I've worked at the IRS, I have been threatened with choking, beating, shooting, and bombing and I work in one of the "customer service" type departments. Imagine what the workers in the audit and collection departments must endure! The most frightening day of my life was the day we had to quickly evacuate our building for a bomb threat on the day after the Oklahoma City bombing!
One more point before getting too upset about having to pay your fair share in taxes, (federal, state, local, property, gasoline, tobacco, whatever!) stop and think about what those taxes provide.
Has anyone in your family ever been in the military? Where do you think their paycheck or pension money comes from? How about the 911 operator who answers when you call who pays her salary? Where did the money come from to build the school your children attend, the roads you drive on every day, and the library you use? How about the subsidies to farmers which keep the prices of milk and produce at reasonable levels where did that money come from?
Taxes we all pay, that's where! What about the company you work for does any part of their business come from government entities? Are you sure? Government entities purchase millions of dollars in goods and services from private companies. And don't forget, thousands of people in the Atlanta area alone are employed by government agencies of all sorts, and all those paychecks go right back into the economy.
In his letter, Mr. James criticized the IRS for having too much control over life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is a ridiculous statement. Have you every heard of someone from the IRS going to someone's house and telling them to stop being happy? What he really means is that he doesn't like paying his taxes. I don't like paying mine either, but if we want to keep and to continue improving the standard of living in this country, the money has to come from somewhere, and I'm proud to do my part. Any real American should feel the same way.
I am withholding my name because of fear of retaliation, but I hope you will print my letter anyway.

IRS employee

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