The IRS has been underfunded and understaffed and demonized for a couple of decades. They've been strictly not allowed nor funded to develop online or automatic tax filing for awhile now, largely in part due to lobbying from intuit, H&R block, etc. I've worked in tax for a few years now, and that's basically the simplified overview of the situation.
The IRS does not need to be a large operation. It's a problem created by our complex tax code, something every politician ever has promised to fix, and yet here we are. I for one would rather see the root issue solved. The primary role of the IRS can be done with a handful of agents and computers. They do not need to be a law enforcement agency. They do not need to have guns. They do not need to be yet another arm of federal and executive overreach and power expansion.
The politicians that have said this are either liars or fools or both. The US government has for more than a century chosen to use the tax code as a policy tool, by providing taxes, tax credits and deductions to encourage and discourage behavior of its choosing. Contrast with the situation in many other countries where the government just simply reimburses people who engage in the desirable behavior. No single politician will ever be able to reverse this approach to entangling policy and taxation.
And yes, they are enforcing laws. If they do not, then some other agency with similar or more expansive police powers will need to do the same thing.
America has always had people who engaged in wishful thinking about funding government. Indeed that's why the United States even exists in its current form. After achieving independence all the colonists were very clear that they should just voluntarily pay to run stuff, it's obvious right? No need for a central government to take money, we will gladly give it.
But of course these good intentions last only five minutes. No, we don't have any money for Central government this year, the harvest was poor and besides we needed money for our new great hall. We'll get you next time. And like that old friend who always seems to have forgotten their wallet, the colonists never did seem to have the money they'd said they'd give voluntarily.
So the Constitution establishes a government which can take what it needs, because the wishful thinking doesn't work.
I fully agree, a negative income tax model that is similar to a UBI would minimize the bureaucracy of income taxes while simultaneously reducing the need for ultra specific means tested benefits programs.
There is hardly any bureaucracy around income taxes. As a sibling post mentions, it's the insistence on legislating through the tax code (via deductions and credits) that makes the IRS' job incredibly complicated.
Nothing in either of those links remotely substantiates "frequently been used as a tool to go after political opponents". It's just a list of allegations. A bunch of people and organizations (from, it seems, all across the political spectrum) got audited, that's it? Did the audits... find mistakes in their taxes?
For those here who are young and haven't had an exposure to this process outside of meme sites: an IRS audit is indeed a big pain in the ass. But as political oppression, it's pretty weak sauce. It's not like we're deploying novichok in the service of tax collection.
They weren't even tax audits in the 'targeting scandal' - 501C4 groups are required to be non-partisan. In the wake of Citizens United, tons of new C4s sprung up and the IRS was required to vet them to make sure they were actually non-partisan. So they started trying to filter that list down from every new org, to those that would likely be partisan.. e.g. those with "tea party" in the name or "progressive" or "occupy".
Through just relentless bad faith and a bottomless victim complex, the Republican House committees spent years insisting that Obama was targeting them, by literally restricting the IRS audit to only the right leaning lists and then presenting the IG results as comprehensive: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/154584-ig-audit-of-irs-ac...
As mentioned in your first example, they didn't go after opponents at all, unless you mean they went after both groups who would be considered opponents of each other. It was a great big fake news fiasco.
