Tim Cavanaugh explains that your jaundiced view of the Internal Revenue Service is clearly contradicted by the IRS’s approach to helping people with tax troubles:
Sometimes it seems like you only hear the bad news about the Internal Revenue Service: the targeting of the president’s enemies; the padding of union bosses’ hours.
But sometimes the federal tax collector is there to lend a hand.
During 26 of the darkest months of the post-recession, 1,100 persons in the United States had “substantiated Federal tax compliance problems.”
Yet during that same time period, from October 2010 through December 2012, the IRS showed mercy, even charity. It gave those 1,100 people more than $1 million in cash awards, as well as other considerations of value.
The other considerations included 69 workplace promotions and 10,000 hours worth of what California public employees call “air time.”
That is to say: All of those 1,100 were IRS employees.
