Salon Books | Tax Books


	The Cost of Rights The Power To Destroy The Greedy Hand F E A T U R E Remembering Andre Dubus By Richard Ravin A friend recalls the generosity of a big writer and a big man T A B L E+T A L K It's almost spring, and books about baseball are a hot topic in the Books section of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein By Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn Nonfiction (03/17/99) Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin By Alice Echols Nonfiction (03/16/99) The Entertainment Economy By Michael J. Wolf Nonfiction (03/15/99) The Handyman By Carolyn See Fiction (03/12/99) Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War By Mark Bowden Nonfiction (03/11/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SEARCH REVIEWS BY: title of book author publisher reviewer - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BLACK VOICES An archive of stories on African-American themes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		TAX BOOKS \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - At the time, skeptics objected that confidentiality laws made it hard for the agency to refute the witnesses and that anecdotal evidence did not prove a widespread pattern of abuse. Indeed, some of the specific incidents recorded in "The Power to Destroy" sound like docudrama-style "distillations" of the truth: In one case, an affidavit has an IRS agent "slamming his fist on the table and stating, 'This family has no respect for government authority and [expletive deleted] we're going to teach them a lesson.'" Still, certain abuses are common, by the IRS's own account; it reported in July that agents violated the agency's own procedures for seizing property more than a quarter of the time. "The problem," Roth writes, "is that the unchecked power given to the Internal Revenue Service, and the culture of isolation that protects it against interference and oversight, succeed in providing cover for a handful of malicious or overzealous employees as they engage in renegade agendas." Think Kafka, Orwell, "No Exit." The literary possibilities seem endless. So, it must be noted, does Sen. Roth's book. Sure, William H. Nixon's name also appears on the cover as co-author, and the former Reagan administration speechwriter might well have composed most of the manuscript. But the narrative is strictly first person singular, and its high ratio of self-aggrandizing claptrap to useful information fairly screams "Vanity Project for Sitting Member of Congress!" The senator takes pity on Stephanie Toth, "a beautiful blonde with Nordic blue eyes." Stuck with an unfair bill for $10,000, she thought she had run out of options until ... "Finally, my Dad said, 'Why don't you try to write Senator Roth?' I thought he was kidding. Who was I?" And in a book about tax-collection policy, Roth actually ponders his own mortality: "The most fitting epitaph for my headstone -- the one I would choose, as Jefferson chose the accomplishments etched in marble above his grave -- would be simple: 'Here lies Bill Roth ... the taxpayer's best friend.'" Oh, dear. Unfortunately, "The Power to Destroy" has more serious defects than these. If Roth is right about the agency's history and about its ability to thwart reforms in the past, his faith in the 1998 IRS restructuring law seems sort of heroic. "There has already been marked improvement in self-inspection and taxpayer services," he maintains, "not to mention a bold new mission statement that places emphasis on service and fair treatment to the taxpayer." A new mission statement? Might as well use the soft cushions and the comfy chair to force a change. Anyway, instead of making agents nod empathetically while placing liens on everything a taxpayer owns, Congress ought to be getting rid of the complexities that lead to honest errors by some taxpayers, encourage cheating by others and provide cover for abuses by the IRS. Enter Amity Shlaes, a tax policy writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In "The Greedy Hand," she maintains that Democrats who favor progressive tax rates and Republicans who try to shore up the family through targeted tax breaks have cobbled together a bizarre tax code that distorts Americans' behavior from cradle to grave. She doesn't have to look too hard to find proof. Depending on the circumstances, you get -- or will soon get -- tax breaks for getting married, remaining single, putting your children in day care, staying home with them, buying a home, etc. Because of all these breaks, overall tax rates are higher, and people end up making choices they wouldn't otherwise make. This is not an original argument, but it is a legitimate one. And Shlaes is blessed with a profound, obsessive understanding of how political goals collide to create bad tax laws and of whom those bad laws end up hurting. She notes, for instance, that 21 million American married couples pay more in taxes than if they were single, and 25 million pay less; she attributes the problem to three contradictory goals: "You could have progressivity, you could have low rates for the second earner and you could have a tax arrangement that buttressed the traditional family," she writes. "But you could not have all three." Shlaes displays some of the biases you might expect from a Wall Street Journal editorialist: She insists as an article of faith that taxes should be lower. Maybe she's right, but she doesn't provide any detailed reasons. Also, Shlaes half assumes that people would rather avoid taxes than make more money -- a notion that informs her criticism of the earned income credit, which is designed to assist the working poor. She writes, "A babysitter who has children of her own and makes $11,000 stands to lose thousands in cash EIC rebates if she takes a job that brings her income up to $25,000. Why, then, should she go to work to take care of someone else's children when she does just as well staying home taking care of her own?" The answer is obvious: The baby sitter is still making thousands of dollars more. Still, many of Shlaes' recommendations make sense. Taxes should exist to raise revenue -- and shouldn't be used to influence people's behavior. Taxes should also be simpler. She endorses a plan by the Cato Institute that would give people a choice between the current scheme and a flat rate with few deductions. Something has to give. Everyone outside the canned-goods-and-assault-rifles crowd recognizes that taxes are a necessary inconvenience in principle. So why must tax laws be so labyrinthine in fact? SALON \| March 18, 1999 Dante Ramos is an editorial writer at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.