Any government agency with the ability to take away your home is simply too powerful. But, that’s exactly the type of power and authority that has been given to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and that’s why I’m on the frontlines of defending taxpayers from this massive government agency.
Considering that the IRS was originally created to collect revenues needed for the war by President Abraham Lincoln, the changes over the years have made the IRS today into the most intimidating branch of the government.
Believe it or not, the IRS is allowed to carry guns and at times in history was instructed to shoot citizens for trying to avoid tax collectors. Now days, we still have armed Revenue Officers, but the weapons they use the most are huge fees, penalties and assessments made by the IRS to imprison troubled taxpayers with years and years of unpayable debt.
I’ve seen taxpayers who have paid year in and year out on a tax debt only to have their total debt continue to increase because of interest and penalties. One taxpayer had paid over $40,000 to satisfy what was a $20,000 tax debt, and she still owed another $20,000 because of the compounding interest and penalties.
Any credit card company that behaved this way would be investigated and put out of business. Yet, we have empowered this government agency to treat our citizens with the harshness that you would expect from communist China.
Many 1000’s of people and businesses find themselves in trouble every year because of a simple data entry mistake on the part of the IRS. This can many times trigger an entire audit, penalties, interest rate assessment and hikes. This doesn’t even include the additional charges and countless hours of wasted time they have to incur to prove themselves innocent by spending thousands of dollars on attorney’s and representation to solve something the IRS should of caught and fixed internally. Their attitude is like the criminal justice system in Mexico, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
Other reasons people can easily get caught up in the system is by what seems like a whim on the part of the IRS. Out of the blue, if your tax return doesn’t seem perfect or if you are one of the many who suffer from the “luck of the draw”, the IRS can adjust your tax return. The IRS has many reasons they use to adjust your filed tax return and since they have three years to review it, many times it will be at the end of this period when you finally get notified. When they do this, they then charge compound daily interest rates for the entire time and also fees and penalties that can lead many times to the doubling of your tax obligation in just a matter of a few years. So now the $10,000 you paid and had budgeted for suddenly becomes $20,000. Many taxpayers not only do not have that, but now they risk liens, and tactics from IRS agents that can completely destroy their business. We have documented cases where the IRS has sent letters to many of the clients of a business demanding they send any money they owe the business to the IRS instead. This of course completely ruins any goodwill the client and business had, and therefore usually ends up in another failed business that someone at sometime put everything they had into creating it. One common mistake or unfair tactic by the IRS and the domino effect they create can be devastating to thousands of people.
I truly get fed up with the problems that have been created by the massive expansion of government into all aspects of our lives. Their constant need to reach into our pockets even deeper to plunder some more had me searching for real ways to fight it. One way I found I could directly fight it was by creating a tax resolution organization that will help those who have found themselves in trouble with the hundreds of thousands of tax laws and guidelines. We have now helped thousands of people who have been unfairly treated by our government abusing its authority to collect taxes in a fair and reasonable way. This is something I don’t just talk about, or make promises to people only to break when it’s convenient, this is something I have been doing on a full time basis for years and plan on doing until we truly have an IRS that understands they work for us, we don’t work for them!
The other way I want to fight taxes is by changing the state laws for taxation. California has the 4th highest taxes in the country and this is driving business and jobs out of our state. California’s tax and regulatory atmosphere is the main reason we are losing businesses and jobs to other states. When you have states like Nevada running commercials making fun of our legislators for driving business out, something has to be done about it. We need legislators that understand this and are willing to make the changes needed to save this state.
When I see people struggling to survive, let alone be able to live in this state, it blows my mind that politicians are still trying to figure out new ways to tax people in California. This year, Tax Freedom Day will arrive on April 20th for Californians according to the Tax Foundation’s annual calculation. This represents working almost 5 months of the year just to pay the bills the government has run up. When Americans will pay more in taxes this year than they will spend on food, clothing and housing combined, the next thing to be fixed is the broken laws that are breaking our citizens’ backs!