If the IRS is ready and willing to retrieve improper gains from executives of alleged non-profit credit counseling agencies, it seems only fair that they be prepared to also retrieve improper gains from executives of the for-profit businesses that defaulted on the promise of retirees’ pensions and employees’ healthcare while managing to sometimes rape the natural resources of the communities in which they conduct business. “Preparation” on the part of the IRS however, requires public funding.
Meanwhile, as the airline industry lines up to join the steel industry to access the US Pension Benefit Guaranty Fund as a handy bail-out tool, House Speaker Dennis Hastert‘s (R-Illinois) new book advocates further dismantling the one government agency even remotely qualified to pursue such gains in the public interest. It’s almost funny to see a Republican lauding the flat tax formerly labeled “highly radical” when it was presented not so very long ago by one of California’s former Democratic governor’s, Jerry Brown.
Any current version of a flat tax would be at risk, however, for being computed against “net” income and exclusive of assets for the privileged, but against simple “gross wages” for wage-earners. As for any sales tax, we’ve all seen them diverted from the purpose for which they were collected only to further depress economic recoveries. Value-added taxes have the potential to become an accounting nightmare that creates more problems than it solves. Of course, that could be the point. Given the obviously systemic and heavy presence of special interests in and among policy makers on the hill, almost any other turn of Hastert’s suggested tax events would be surprising.
Assuming the IRS is funded to meet the challenge, the cookie crumbs of the aftermath would still be preferable to realizing little to nothing for the nation’s treasury.
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