This Year, Even the Taxman is Mad

[WSJ_law_blog]

We’ve been wondering all morning why this year, of all years, Americans from coast to coast are choosing to mobilize in these Tax Day “tea parties” marches, described by Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds in an opinion piece in Wedneday’s Journal as “rallies . . . to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending.”

Part of it, as Reynolds outlines, has to do with technology and its ability to bring big groups of people together fairly quickly. And part of it likely has to do with the state of the economy and a broader objections by swaths of the populus to President Obama’s policies. But might part of it also reflect an anger on the part of the people over the willingness of some of the nation’s leaders to play fast and loose with (or at least show carelessness in regard to) the tax laws?

We’re not sure on the last point — we haven’t canvassed the tea party crowd — but judging from this Chicago Tribune story, we might be on to something.

The piece opens: “[A]s today’s tax deadline looms, some Americans are asking: Why should we comply with arcane Internal Revenue Service requirements when top administration officials failed to do the same? . . . The harsh reaction resonates not only among those organizing anti-tax protests across the country this week. It’s even discussed in the hushed hallways of the IRS.”

The taxman is mad? It seems so. “Our members are upset and angry,” said Colleen Kelley, head of the National Treasury Employees Union. According to the Trib, strict rules can cost IRS agents their jobs if they make a mistake, while Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and others are treated with relative leniency.

Larry Gibbs, IRS commissioner during the Reagan administration and now a Washington, D.C., tax attorney, told the Trib that a few taxpayers might see the tax issues of current nominees as a rationale to cheat.

“Some people are looking for an excuse,” Gibbs said. “Some people might make the jump to rationalize that because these others are doing it they can do it, too. That’s where the risk is.”

IRS compliance employees have reported that taxpayers occasionally are citing the Geithner case when asked to pay their tax bills. “It’s making the compliance conversation harder,” she said.