Monday, July 13, 1998

IRS reform worthwhile, if not perfect

The vote for IRS reform in the House was 402 to 8 and in the Senate 96 to 2, and so you can figure there weren't many critics of the measure in Congress.

They do exist, though. There are those who say the bill will mainly make life easier for cheats, that it will cost billions and that the people who were audited and possibly even abused by the tax agency were precious few, a tiny, itsy-bitsy minority of the American people.

All of which misses the point.

Yes, it may now be marginally easier to trick the government and get away with it, but free societies have always been willing to let some of the guilty get away with their crimes in order to let the majority - the innocent - be free of the kinds of governmental measures, some of them oppressive, that would otherwise be required.

The financial cost of the bill was never hidden. The public did not seem to mind.

And while it's true that a relatively small percentage of the population has experienced the most unspeakable of the IRS abuses, many citizens have tasted IRS arrogance. That's the most plausible explanation of why voters so clearly favored the bill, causing so lopsided a proportion of their congressional representatives to favor it, too.