One Hundred Years of IRS Political Targeting

Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard

“One hundred years ago, Senator James Couzens, a Michigan Republican, took to the Senate floor to denounce the Bureau of Internal Revenue for abusing its power and trampling innocent taxpayers. Couzens launched a sweeping Senate investigation of federal tax collectors. One year later, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes as Couzens stepped out of the Senate chamber. Couzens fought the case, and eventually proved that he had actually overpaid his taxes by roughly one million dollars, as David Burnham noted in his 1989 classic, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power. But the precedent of the IRS exploiting its power to attack its critics was firmly established.” (04/15/24)

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2024/04/15/one-hundred-years-of-irs-political-targeting/