RE: Can Congress abolish the entire IRS, rather than just lower their funding?
They can, but consider the hurdles:
1) It will be DOA when it reaches Senate.
2) Even if it PASSES both houses, Obama still has the veto pen.
3) They’ll have to find a way to replace the IRS since SOMEONE has to collect revenue.
I think the proposal made by Greg Richards of American Thinker would be a more practical FIRST STEP.
We agree that the nation must have a revenue collection agency. So, how to restructure the IRS?
As a first cut, perhaps the new agency would have six regional and independent divisions. They would be located in offices around the country, and there would be no single IRS commissioner in Washington.
The six agency heads would report to Congress every six months on the activities of their agencies on penalty of perjury. There would be new offices of ombudsman for each regional agency. The ombudsmen would testify to Congress along with the agency heads every six months as to the number and type of complaints they had received and what had been the disposition of those complaints.
All salaries in the new six agencies would start at 10% below the equivalent levels in the current IRS. There would be no union in the six agencies, because the agencies must represent the interests of the country and that alone.
Something like that.
Not a bad idea, except if we’re going to keep the IRS at all I’d go with 58 independent regional divisions - one per state plus one for all other areas such as DC.