Americans Are Correct to Be Instinctively Terrified of the IRS

This argument seems to be popular online this week:

Markowitz says that he has “never understood the fear of an IRS audit.” Given that he is an IRS-enrolled agent — that is, that he makes his living representing taxpayers in front of the IRS — this should perhaps not be too surprising. Oddly enough, my butcher doesn’t understand vegetarians. Nevertheless, I might be able to help Markowitz out a little — or, at least, to shed some light on why this particular tweet yielded such a cacophony of mockery and indignation, and on why the Democratic Party’s desire to be associated with IRS audits is a terrible political move.

Markowitz suggests that those who are worried about being audited by the IRS should just make sure that they are truthful on their return. “Don’t lie,” he suggests. “How about just don’t cheat on tax returns?” But this, of course, misses the point. I do not “cheat” on my tax return, and I never have. I don’t “lie,” either. But I’m still terrified of the IRS. Why? Because the process of being audited — especially in-person, which this funding will increase — is an absolute nightmare. It’s costly. It’s stressful. It’s invasive. It’s time-consuming. It’s easily manipulated by rogue political actors. And it is all of those things even if the saga concludes with a nice letter saying that everything is in order after all.

One suspects that, in any other circumstance, this would be intuitively obvious. Suppose that, tomorrow, the FBI announced that it intended to begin “auditing” millions of people to find out if they had committed any federal crimes. Would Markowitz and co. respond to this news by shrugging and saying, “don’t lie,” or “if you haven’t broken any laws, who cares?” I suspect that they would not. And they’d be absolutely right to decline to do so. The federal government is extremely powerful, and having it snoop around your life is distressing and scary even when you’ve done nothing wrong. In what other circumstances would Markowitz’s implication hold water? I’m not a domestic abuser. Should I therefore not care if the government wants to put cameras around my house? I haven’t murdered anyone. Should I therefore not care if the local police open a homicide investigation into me? The very idea is totalitarian.

To illustrate this, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the IRS’s intent here was reversed — that, instead of the Democratic Party having passed a law designed to squeeze more money out of taxpayers by cracking down on tax evasion, the Republicans had passed a law designed to ensure that Americans were taking advantage of all the deductions and credits in the tax code. In other words, assume for the sake of argument that Americans were facing the prospect of a million-and-a-half more audits, but with the aim of ensuring that everyone audited was getting a bigger refund than they otherwise might. “We just want,” the Republicans might say, “to ensure that you’re not overpaying. Even better: The average audited American will get to keep an extra $240!”

Would that make me comfortable with such an audit?

No, it bloody well would not. On the contrary: I would enthusiastically relinquish that $240 — or more — in order to avoid one.

One of the best things about the United States is that its constitution habitually preempts the “If you have done nothing wrong . . .” arguments that tend to prevail elsewhere. As a matter of course, Americans do not buy the idea that only a man with something to hide would cherish the Fourth Amendment or that only a man who is guilty would plead the Fifth or that only a man who wishes to demean others would wish to favor a robust understanding of freedom of speech. The broad opposition to a supercharged IRS that has so baffled Adam Markowitz and his fellow travelers is predicated upon a similar conceit: that this is a free country, and that those who wish to make it less so can shove it.