Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous compliance costs of the internal revenue code. Narrated by Hiwa Alaghebandian of the American Enterprise Institute, the mini-documentary explains how needless complexity creates an added […]

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation, joined by 14 of the country’s most influential free market and taxpayer advocacy organizations, urged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to immediately withdrawal an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulation “that would undermine American banks and the U.S. financial system.”

A new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) exposes a dangerous IRS proposal that would have disturbing ramifications for the US economy. Entitled, “The IRS Running Amok: Bureaucrats Want to Force Americans Banks to Put Foreign Tax Law Above U.S. Tax Law,” the video details how this rogue regulation would drive foreign capital from U.S. markets, harm American financial institutions, and endanger human rights.

Even though it violates existing law, the IRS is seeking to impose a regulation that will discourage foreign investment in the U.S. economy and undermine the competitiveness of American banks. This CF&P Foundation video provides five reasons why this proposal is misguided, including the risk to innocent people living under corrupt and tyrannical governments.

I’m not a big fan of the IRS, but usually I blame politicians for America’s corrupt, unfair, and punitive tax system. Sometimes, though, the tax bureaucrats run amok and earn their reputation as America’s most despised bureaucracy. Here’s an example. Earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service proposed a regulation that would force American banks […]

We are writing to express our deep concern with an onerous regulation (REG-146097-09), proposed by the Internal Revenue Service, that would undermine American banks and the U.S. financial system by requiring the reporting of deposit interest paid to nonresident aliens.

My previous post looked at the federal government’s troubling decision to investigate, persecute, prosecute, and ultimately imprison a random home-loan borrower named Charlie Engle for the crime of mortgage fraud. Citing a column on the legal fallout from the financial crisis in the New York Times, I noted that it was rather odd that the […]

One of my many frustrations of working in Washington is dealing with perpetual-motion-machine assertions. The classic example is Keynesian economics, which is based on the notion that you magically create additional economic activity by having the government spend money instead of allowing the private sector to decide how it gets spent (in an especially bizarre […]

All members of the Florida Delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives – 19 Republicans and 6 Democrats, spearheaded by Congressman Bill Posey – have signed a letter to President Obama urging withdrawal of a proposed IRS regulation (REG-146097-09) that would undermine U.S. financial markets by requiring American banks to put foreign tax law above U.S. Tax law.

The IRS certainly deserves lots of condemnation for its rogue actions, including a $200 fine for a taxpayer who supposedly underpaid his tax bill by 4 pennies. But the tax-collection agency also should be criticized for blundering incompetence. In the past, I’ve mocked the Internal Revenue Service for sending checks to convicts. Now it’s time […]