When TEA party groups sought tax free status with the IRS and found themselves entangled in a White House driven program of retribution they came face to face with the punitive nature of the current tax code. They also invited a snake into the house, the kind that bites.
The need for "tax exempt" status only exists in a world where taxes are paid by some and not others. And the "exemption" from those taxes only exists in a world where lobbyists can persuade congress to grant "exemptions".
That's why real tax reform will take bold men to get behind it. Those who have spent their lives lobbying for clients and pocketing millions along the way have found the sandbox of taxes a great place to play. Carving out exemptions, negotiating credits, adding sub-paragraphs to sub-paragraphs in the Internal Revenue Code and creating a system that requires lawyers, and accountants and tax-preparation companies to do the calculations has created a labyrinth of cottage industries so intertwined with the current tax structure that any serious attempt at modernization will be met with fierce resistance from those who profit off of taxes as they currently exist.
Don't think for one minute that thousands of people with a vested interest in keeping the status quo, with perhaps some pork barrel tweaks, aren't already putting together well crafted messages to deliver to the public and to elected officials why anything that really makes sense is a bad idea.
But this scandal over the IRS targeting TEA party groups might just have enraged the wrong monster. Every evil the TEA party railed against was found in bed together in this infuriating mess.
There is the mean old IRS, the dictatorial president, a huge federal bureaucracy too big, David Axelrod said, for even the president to control and of course the lobbyists and DC insiders who are lining up to prevent their cash cow, the income tax, from being slaughtered.
As the old saying goes, you can milk a cow for a long time, but you can only eat it once. Meaningful tax reform, like moving to the Fair Tax, will kill the cash cow for a lot of people suckling off of her for decades. But the move will not only eliminate the punitive nature of the cows now obvious kick, it will give plenty of red meat to a growing TEA party appetite for liberty. And that's a good thing.
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