Free Republic

The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year--it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before.

It’s tax time again and once again we will be forced to knuckle under to our government’s demands. If you suspect there is plenty wrong with the current system, here are some facts to support your suspicions. The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. All of Shakespeare’s works are 900,000 words long. According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. In 19 37 two pages of instructions came with a Form 1040; today 189 pages are necessary. There have been 4428 changes to the tax code...