Weaponizing the IRS

Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, recently revealed her opposition to standard federal financial disclosures for non-profit organizations. She said filing an IRS Form 990 was “triggering” for her: “This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is literally being weaponized against us, against the people we work with.” Cullors understands what conservatives have known for years: Activists use government information to target and harass others. Liberals are now doing it with private personal tax filings from the IRS, and the left is relatively quiet about it. Such abuse of government filings has dangerous implications for society.

Liberals have been at this for some time. In New York, media outlets obtained gun ownership records and outed gun owners, making them potential victims of crime as criminals target the gun owners’ homes for their guns. In California, those who supported Proposition 8, which proposed adding an amendment to the state’s constitution recognizing marriage as being between one man and one woman, were routinely harassed. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich lost his job because woke activists demanded it because he supported Prop 8.

Cullors understands what can happen to donors and others who work with a controversial organization like Black Lives Matter. After all, BLM activists have repeatedly targeted businesses and individuals, demanding their support or silence. Increasingly, liberals embedded within the IRS are targeting their political opponents.

During President Barack Obama’s time in office, the Republican-majority House of Representatives held Lois Lerner, the former director of the exempt organizations unit of the IRS, in contempt of Congress. Lerner had seemingly steered the IRS toward additional scrutiny of conservative non-profit groups and obstructed the ability of tea party organizations to obtain non-profit tax status. During her testimony before Congress, Lerner exercised her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. The story led to bipartisan outrage, with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) calling for Lerner’s ouster. Obama officials eventually pushed her out of her job.

Now, it has happened again. With much less media fanfare and coverage, ProPublica, a left-of-center non-profit media outlet, has obtained secret IRS files on the 400 wealthiest Americans from 2013 to 2018. Many U.S. billionaires do not earn high incomes. They essentially live on dividends, which are taxed at a lower rate, and borrow money against their wealth to offset tax liabilities. But some wealthy Americans who make an average of $110 million a year must file a Form 1040 like everyone else.

ProPublica revealed that through a series of tax avoidance strategies these affluent Americans often do not pay what liberals call “their fair share.” It cannot be a coincidence that the story came out at tax-filing time and at a time when there are increasing calls for a wealth tax against these people. They are being targeted willfully to affect changes in public policy.

What these wealthy Americans have done is perfectly legal and consistent with the current U.S. tax code. That tax code was put in place to serve the nation’s interest. Congress may vilify billionaires, but Congress wrote the rules that these individuals are following. The rules benefit far more than billionaires, but liberals would prefer we focus just on the rich—people like Bill Gates and the Walton family of Walmart fame.

When Rome was in crisis and the Roman Empire seemed on the verge of collapse, what saved it was the Roman bureaucracy. The tax collectors continued to collect. Law enforcement continued enforcement. Judges continued to judge. Port authorities continued to keep ports open and food moving. The Roman legions not on the front lines of battle kept criminals at bay on the roads. The empire could exist even as emperor after emperor rose, got murdered, and was then replaced.

Sadly, in the United States, our bureaucracy is more and more at war with the people. The FBI cannot properly handle investigations into presidential candidates without descending into scandal. It cannot get wind of plots to kidnap governors without implicating itself to the degree that a jury rejects its charges. Now, the IRS is yet again targeting opponents of the left—first the tea party and now the rich.

Our system is stable because we all pay into it by force and because it is less hassle than trying to redirect our money elsewhere. But if liberal operators inside the IRS are willfully leaking secret documents to advance their agenda, it will rapidly destroy trust in the system. Those with the means to do so will look to redirect their money outside the United States.

These leaks undermine the integrity of the tax-collecting process. Because the victims are wealthy, liberals and their friends in the press expect us to have no sympathy for them. But we should see such abuse as an injustice that could happen to us. The left, embedded within the U.S. bureaucracy, is weaponizing private information to advance its ends. That should trouble everyone.