J.D. Tuccille: To End IRS Abuses of Free Speech, End the IRS

To read the
headlines, you’d think the biggest controversy involving the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is over the spat between Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in the
course of an aborted hearing into the IRS’s targeting of primarily
conservative political organizations. Lost in this silliness is the
real issue: the threat to political expression inherent in the
federal tax apparatus, no matter whether through malice, regulatory
zeal, ineptitude, or sheer weight of bureaucracy. That giving the
IRS the power to decide what sort of speech is acceptable was a
stupid, stupid idea should have been clear from the beginning,
writes J.D. Tuccille. The tax agency has a history of use as a
bludgeon against enemies of sitting administrations and the IRS
itself, which goes back long before the current kerfuffle. Ending
such abuses will require ending the IRS.

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