They promised to stop doing it, but here is yet another IRS robbery
“They seize a little over a hundred thousand dollars out of my business account here, which was all that was in there. It took thirteen years to get it and less than thirteen seconds, I guess, to take it away.” – Lyndon McLellan, owner of L&M Convenience Mart.
We really do live in a third-world banana republic:
A few days ago, I saw headlines about the promise that the IRS will stop robbing people. I thought about writing about it as good news. But why trust an organization of sleazy bandits like the IRS? So I waited to see what would happen.
Didn’t have to wait long. Here is the Institute of Justice writing at Forbes.com: “IRS Seizes Over $100,000 From Innocent Small Business Owner, Despite Promise To End Raids.”
Like thousands of other victims of civil forfeiture, the government never charged Lyndon with a crime. Now, with help from the Institute for Justice, he’s fighting back to regain his hard-earned cash.
For over a decade, Lyndon has run his mart, an unassuming place where locals stock up on soft drinks and cigarettes. But last year, the IRS wiped out the shop’s bank account using the Bank Secrecy Act. Under this law, banks must report all cash transactions over $10,000. Federal law also prohibits “structuring” deposits in amounts under $10,000 to skirt the reporting requirement.
But making frequent cash deposits under $10,000 is only a crime if someone deliberately intends to evade filing those reports. Lyndon had no such intention. According to his niece, who usually made deposits, a bank teller told her that depositing less than $10,000 would avoid burdensome paperwork. Moreover, forfeiting Lyndon’s cash would violate his constitutional right to due process and the Eighth Amendment’s protection against “excessive fines.”
This travesty of justice should not have happened. Last October, after The New York Times ran a front-page feature on unjust structuring seizures, the IRS announced it “will no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds associated solely with ‘legal source’ structuring cases.” In other words, Americans who earned their money lawfully would not be targeted.
So the premise here is that “this travesty of justice should not have happened” because the IRS promised to stop.
No, this travesty of justice should never have happened because the IRS should not exist and there should be no mandatory reporting laws for anyone.
I’m not against income tax in principle (provided that the combined tax at the local, state, and Federal level adds up to no more than nine percent of income). But mandatory reporting is a complete denial of how the government is supposed to investigate crimes. Let them get reports that people are cheating on their taxes and go investigate. It is not right to force people to reveal all their private financial affairs to government bureaucrats.
Until we realize that the IRS is a hostile enemy of Americans, we will continue to see stories of one IRS robbery after another. We can’t negotiate with power addicts who hate and despise productive businessmen. The organization needs to be terminated. Period.
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