RIP IRS?

Most Americans see the IRS and paying taxes as a necessary burden of living in society; most but not all.

Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has garnered a lot of attention lately. His primary claim to fame has been his firm stance against the increasingly unpopular US occupation of Iraq. While this position has brought him support from voters of all political stripes it is some of his other positions that many find rather jarring.

One of these is his firm belief that the US government has no need for and should do away with the IRS. In an age when no working Americans can remember not paying an income tax to the IRS this can seem startling and a little exciting. Paul’s position, as laid out at his website RonPaul2008.com, is that every working American should bring home 100% of what they earned.

There’s a seductive quality to his position. During the first one hundred plus years of the Union, Americans paid no income tax to the Federal government. To varying degrees most of the US treasury came from tariffs. It worked then, Paul argues, and it can work again.

But a deeper look at this proposal reveals problems from many perspectives - political, economic, business, international relations, etc. Over the coming weeks, I’ll take a closer look at the potential impact of shuttering the IRS.