No, WaPo, GOP's anti-IRS bill is completely justified

The biggest obstacle before the performance of the IRS’s most quotidian function, the processing of average taxpayers’ income-tax returns, isn’t a lack of manpower devoted to evaluating “tax avoidance schemes by the superwealthy.” Not according to the IRS. Those obstacles include a lack of minimum standards for non-credentialed preparers, jurisdictional issues in U.S. courts, and the inscrutable complexity of the Earned Income Tax Credit, among other sticking points. Manpower deficits, training requirements, and antiquated IT contribute to the agency’s headaches, but the biggest impediments to revenue generation won’t be resolved by throwing money at the agency. The last Congress chose instead to paper over these problems by giving the agency more resources to do what it’s already doing poorly.

If past performance is any indication, the Republican-led House is as interested in good governance as they are in good headlines. The Post senses, probably correctly, that Republicans believe they will secure political advantage by going after one of the most despised law-enforcement agencies in the United States. Fashionable anti-IRS sentiments have been deemed “bad for democracy,” which is a claim that rests on a theory drawing a direct proportionality between the health of the American republic and the success of Democratic political initiatives. The IRS is not popular, and capitalizing on that fact is not dirty pool.

Given the makeup of the Senate and the occupant of the Oval Office, the House GOP’s gesture amounts to a positioning statement. That doesn’t mean it’s valueless. As statements go, Republicans could do worse than to oppose an initiative that will complicate the lives of average Americans without addressing the real obstacles to an efficient federal revenue-collection service.

[The real problem isn’t even the IRS, per se. It’s the ridiculously complicated income tax code, which Congress and presidents have used for a century to conduct social engineering via tax incentives and penalties. It is now so complicated that even the IRS has trouble unwinding exactly how it works. The House GOP approach is a step in the right direction, but the real solution is in dumping the tax code altogether for either a flat tax or a consumption tax. — Ed]