Eliminate the IRS? That’s just populist pap. We all hate taxes, but if there’s no IRS who’s going to collect whatever type of tax we have? Just voluntarily mail it in? Where? When? Who do you make the check out to?
If we replace income tax with a sales tax who’s going to collect it from the retail businesses? Businesses never cheat on their taxes right? Under any tax system with no oversight or no enforcement this country would be broke in six months.
Should the IRS and their powers be scaled back? Absolutely. But you can’t eliminate a tax collector altogether.
That is the way it was done at the onset of income tax collections.. Getting rid of the IRS does not mean getting rid of the collections process.
In fact, once simplified, you don't need 90% of the accountants or 90% of the IRS..You can transfer the collection and records sections to the department of the Treasury, where it once was...and where it should be. We won't need need this:
"The Information Please Database indicates that 92,033 people worked for the Internal Revenue Service in 2007. The number of people employed by the IRS has declined over the years; in the 1990s, the number of people employed by the agency averaged above 110,000."
OK.....so if you still think we need all that, I wonder what they would all be doing..
“Should the IRS and their powers be scaled back? Absolutely. But you can’t eliminate a tax collector altogether.”
Eliminate it and replace it with something smaller and with less powers.
We survived - and grew faster than any nation in history - without an income tax for 134 years. The government was run on tariffs and fees collected at the point of service by federal agents.
IRS could be eliminated by having a tax structure that I call representative apportionment.
In that model, taxes are assessed to each State based upon the division of the total tax bill into a per representative and per senator basis. Each state would then have a tax bill that would be based upon their representation in Congress. Take that amount and divide it by 12 for a monthly bill. This would then be collected and enforced by the Treasury.