1. THINKING ABOUT TAXES AND THE TAXMAN
1. All the documents quoted on the subject of how the federal government should collect taxes after the United States has been attacked with nuclear weapons were obtained as a result of the Freedom of Information Act. Edward Zuckerman, The Day After World War Three (New York: Viking Press, 1984). Edward Zuckerman has graciously given me access to his papers.
2. Charles Adams, Fight, Flight, Fraud: The Story of Taxation (Curacao: Euro-Dutch Publishers, 1982), p. 9.
3. As quoted by Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), p. 15.
4. As quoted by Cedric Sandford, University of Bath, in an article in the British periodical Accountancy, June 1986.
5. As quoted by Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 122.
6. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819).
7. Dobson v. Commissioner, 320 U.S. 489.
8. The story of the strong wave of opposition to the excise tax in Great Britain and how it fed into the first major tax revolt against the United States has been told by many historians. My account is mostly drawn from Thomas P. Slaughter’s wonderful book, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). I have also drawn upon John C. Chommie’s The Internal Revenue Service (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970).
9. Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, p. 113.
10. As quoted by Chommie, The Internal Revenue Service, p. 3
11. Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, p. 218.
12. Roy G. Blakey and Gladys C. Blakey, The Federal Income Tax (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), p. 4.
13. Chommie, The Internal Revenue Service, p. 10.
14. Ibid., p. 11.
15. Blakey and Blakey, The Federal Income Tax, p. 559.
16. Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), p. 104.
17. Susan B. Long, The Internal Revenue Service: Measuring Tax Offenses and Enforcement Response (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 1980), pp. xvi–xvii.
18. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight, House Ways and Means Committee, March 31, 1988, by Johnny C. Finch, Deputy Director, General Government Division, U.S. General Accounting Office.
19. As quoted by Harold Dubroff, The United States Tax Court: An Historical Analysis (Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, Albany Law Reviews, 1979), p. 12.
20. Greg Anrig, Jr., “Even Seasoned Pros Are Confused This Year,” Money, March 1988, pp. 134–143; “The Pros Flunk Our New Tax Return Test,” Money, March 1989, pp. 110–121.
21. Joel Slemrod and Nikki Sorum, “The Compliance Cost of the U.S. Individual Income Tax System,” National Tax Journal, vol. 37, no. 4 (December 1984), pp. 461–74.
22. General Accounting Office, “Telephone Assistance to Taxpayers Can Be Improved” (Washington, D.C.: June 10, 1975), p. 22.
23. General Accounting Office, Tax Administration: Accessibility, Timeliness, and Accuracy of IRS’ Telephone Assistance Program (Washington, D.C., December 1987), p. 11.
24. Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
2. FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH THE IRS
1. John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, President’s Office Files, Box 63.
2. The Ken Cole memo and others concerning the Nixon administration discussion of the political impact of withholding were obtained at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., Treasury Department files, General Government.
3. The Minnesota survey, “The Compliance Cost of the U.S. Individual Income Tax System,” was described by Joel Slemrod and Nikki Sorum, National Tax Journal, vol. 37, no. 4 (December 1984), pp. 461–74; the Syracuse study was described by Susan B. Long and Judyth A. Swingen, Tax Notes, December 19, 1988, pp. 1343–47.
4. A Report to the Administrative Conference of the United States on Some Administrative Procedures of the Internal Revenue Service, Washington, D.C., 1975, Principal Consultant, Charles Davenport.
5. IRS Report on the Role of Sanctions in Tax Compliance, 1–2 (Sept. 1963), as quoted in Davenport, A Report to the Administrative Conference.
6. Karyl A. Kinsey, American Bar Foundation, The Social Dynamics of Tax Encounters: Perspectives of Practitioners and Officials, a paper presented at the IRS Research Conference on the Role of the Tax Practitioner in the Tax System, November 1987.
7. Internal Revenue Service, 1988 Annual Report, Washington, D.C.
8. General Accounting Office, IRS’ Audits of Individual Taxpayers and Its Audit Quality Control System Need to Be Better (Washington, D.C., August 15, 1979).
9. IRS study cited by Long, The Internal Revenue Service, p. 75.
10. David C. Skinner and George Wachendorf, Defeating the IRS: A Manual of Strategy and Tactics for Attorneys, Accountants, Businessmen and Other Professionals (Jacksonville, Fla.: Sunbelt Publishing Co., 1981), p. 29.
1. The Production statistics quoted here and elsewhere in this chapter were provided by the IRS. The agency for many years has published an annual report that contains many pages of tabular material about the tax collection process. In addition, however, the IRS develops for its own management purposes even more detailed statistics concerning many matters not covered in the annual reports. For these i am indebted to Professor Susan B. Long of syracuse university, whose tireless invocation of the Freedom of Information Act during the last fifteen years has won her a cornucopia of statistical data about the agency. For the description of the major collection procedures of the IRS, I am indebted to a large number of IRS officials who patiently gave a good deal of time explaining how the complex process actually functions.
2. General Accounting Office, Changes to the Appeals Process Could Improve Settlements and Increase Taxpayers’ Satisfaction (Washington, D.C., July 28, 1982), p. 75.
3. IRS Fact Sheet, “Automated Collection System,” June 1984.
4. The discussion of penalties is partly based on a lengthy report prepared by the executive task force of the Commissioner’s Penalty Study, Report on Civil Tax Penalties, February 21, 1989.
5. The story of Sharon Willits and her troubles with the IRS is drawn from a July 18, 1974, decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, Sharon Willits v. W. L. Richardson, 497 F.2d 240 (1974).
6. The story of Thomas L. Treadway and Shirley Lojeski is told in decisions by federal district court judge Charles R. Weiner on January 23, 1985, and by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, on April 22, 1986. The decisions, Shirley Lojeski v. Richard Boandl, are 602 F. Supp. 918 (1984) and 788 F.2d 196 (3rd Cir. 1986). In the spring of 1987, Treadway testified before the Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas.
4. NAILING THE TAX CRIMINALS
1. The General Accounting Office has completed a number of reports criticizing the effectiveness of various aspects of the IRS’s criminal tax-enforcement efforts. One of the first in the series was published on September 1, 1977, and was titled Internal Revenue Service’s Controls Over the Use of Confidential Informants: Recent Improvement Not Adequate. On November 6, 1979, the GAO published a report titled Improved Planning for Developing and Selecting Criminal Tax Cases Can Strengthen Enforcement of Federal Tax Laws. More recently, on April 25, 1988, the GAO published yet another critical report, Investigating Illegal Income—Success Uncertain, Improvements Needed.
The Internal Audit Division of the IRS prepares a constant flow of reports criticizing a wide range of agency programs. These reports are not made public. The author, however, has obtained copies of scores of these documents completed by the Audit Division in the last few years. On April 30, 1986, the division published a report titled Service Programs Are Not Effectively Promoting Taxpayer Compliance, which criticized Criminal Investigation Division efforts concerning tens of thousands of tax-shelter investors. On June 17, 1986, the division published a report titled Improvements Are Needed in the Enforcement of Currency Transaction Reporting and the Use of Currency Data in Compliance Programs. On July 16, 1987, the division published Review of the Criminal Investigation Division in the Buffalo District This report found no evidence of material fraud. It noted, however, that security in the Buffalo office was lax.
2. Concurring opinion of Justice Jackson in United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22, 36
3. Drawn from a series of hearings by the Administrative Practices Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee held in Washington, Pittsburgh, Boston, and San Francisco. The summary information about IRS wiretapping from 1958 to 1965 was presented to the subcommittee on July 12, 1967.
4. The wiretap policy of the United States remained murky and ambiguous until 1968, when Congress approved legislation prohibiting electronic eavesdropping except by law enforcement officials who had obtained a judicial warrant. The legislation was approved by Congress after the Supreme Court ruled in Katz that wiretapping violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The summary of the confused legal situation before the passage of the wiretap law is drawn from an interview with G. Robert Blakey, now a professor at Notre Dame Law School.
5. Directive on Special Racketeer Investigations from Commissioner Caplin to the assistant commissioner (operations), the regional commissioners, and the district directors dated February 15, 1960. The directive was also mentioned in a letter from Caplin to Attorney General Robert Kennedy on the same day. Caplin promised Kennedy his “unstinting cooperation” in the investigation of racketeers.
5. ORGANIZED CRIME IS AN ENEMY IN OUR MIDST
1. The details of the Capone saga are mostly drawn from John Kobler, Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), and Elmer L. Irey, The Tax Dodgers: The Inside Story of the T-Men’s War With America’s Political and Underworld Hoodlums, as told to William J. Slocum (New York: Greenberg, 1948).
2. Irey, The Tax Dodgers, p. 26.
3. Kobler, Capone, p. 316.
4. Irey, The Tax Dodgers, p. 62.
5. Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 56.
6. Ibid., p. 58.
7. The memorandums of the Nixon and Ford administrations about the IRS’s drug enforcement policy were printed as part of the November 11, 1975, oversight hearings into the operations of the IRS held by the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations. On April 25, 1988, the General Accounting Office released a report, Investigating Illegal Income—Success Uncertain, Improvements Needed, that found the IRS’s special enforcement program was largely ineffective.
6. NEW MATH AT THE IRS: 2 + 2 = 3
1. The Husby story is based on interviews with the couple and their lawyer, Montie Day, interviews with IRS officials and the assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case for the government, Jay Weil, and the decision of Federal District Judge Stanley A. Weigel, Husby v. United States.
2. For some years, the IRS’s Inspection Division has churned out reports on the administrative failings of the agency. The reports are marked “For Official Use Only” and the agency goes to great lengths to keep them out of the hands of the public. One example of agency concern involved the Office of Management and Budget, the branch of the White House authorized to supervise the operations of the executive branch. When an OMB official with oversight of the agency requested that the IRS start sending him the reports, it simply failed to comply. Despite the IRS’s reluctance, I managed to obtain a large number of the internal audit reports through an underground source in the agency.
3. Arthur Howe, The Philadelphia Enquirer, March 21, 1985. This was one of a series of ground-breaking articles by Howe and the Enquirer on the 1985 collapse of the IRS. Howe’s coverage of what was clearly a major national story was unique.
4. General Accounting Office, Tax Administration: IRS Needs to Improve Handling of Taxpayer Correspondence, (Washington, D.C., July 1988).
5. Privacy Protection Study Commission, Personal Privacy in an Information Age (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, July 1977), p. 537.
6. General Accounting Office, Internal Revenue Service: Need to Improve the Revenue Accounting Control System, June 1988.
7. General Accounting Office, Tax Administration: Difficulties in Accurately Estimating Tax Examination Yield, August 1988.
7. THE ZEALOTS
1. Internal Revenue Service, ERR-6 Task Force Report, The Treatment of Managers (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), p. 9.
2. The recent part of the story was told in U.S. v. Heller, 830 F.2d 150 (11th Cir. 1987) and several May 1988 stories by Stephen J. Hedges, a reporter with the Miami Herald. The early part of the story about Operation Leprechaun is based mostly on December 2, 197; hearings by the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee.
3. Ronald McKelvey v. Robert M. McKeever, District Director, Internal Revenue Service, January 26, 1976.
4. This story was broken in August 1988 by an excellent series of articles by Ann Carnahan of the Rocky Mountain News. Following Carnahan’s original work, Representative Pat Schroeder and her staff demanded additional confirming details from the IRS.
5. Hearings, Subcommittee of the Department of the Treasury, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Ninety-third Congress, First Session, February 27–March 1, 1973, p. 681.
6. USA v. Omni International Corp., 634 F. Supp. 1414 (1986).
8. BRIBES, BOODLE, AND BUYOFFS
1. The story of Stan Welli, George Ecola, and Ron Koperniak is based on their official complaints to the IRS, the decision of an independent hearing examiner concerning their harassment by the IRS, an interview with Teddy Kern, assistant director for Inspection, interviews with the three men, and their testimony to the House Commerce, Consumer, and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee on July 26, 1989. It also is supported by the sixty-one-page investigative report presented to the subcommittee at those same hearings by subcommittee investigators Leonard Bernard and Richard Stana. Santella himself declined to provide a detailed response to the various charges that had been made about his activities. In a letter to me dated May 17, 1989, two months before the hearing, Santella limited himself to saying that “this situation is very complex” and that I had obtained only “one side of the story.”
2. Many of the important elements of the Saranow story were first disclosed on November 16, 1987, by Richard Behar, a superb investigative reporter then working for Forbes magazine. Saranow discussed many of the allegations that had been made about him by Forbes and other publications in two lengthy telephone interviews he granted me in the summer of 1988. Various aspects of Saranow’s career and associates are based on documents obtained from the state of Illinois, the Municipal Court of Orange County, and the Investigation Division of the IRS. A central participant in the investigation of Saranow was Octavio Pena, the president of Lynch International, an international security consulting company with headquarters in New Jersey. He has granted me lengthy interviews. As the result of a civil suit involving two national clothing manufacturers—Jordache and Guess? Jeans—depositions were taken that also provided useful information about Saranow and his relations with Guess? Finally, the case was the subject of a detailed investigation and report by Leonard Bernard and Richard Stana of the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee. As was the case with other parts of their report, this section was made a part of the subcommittee’s hearing on July 25, 1989.
3. The Langone story is based on interviews with several IRS agents who requested anonymity, an examination of Langone’s travel vouchers obtained from the IRS as the result of a request under the Freedom of Information Act, and the report of Leonard Bernard and Richard Stana presented to the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee on July 25, 1989.
4. The story of John and Alice McManus is based on interviews with several IRS agents who requested anonymity; the legal documents filed in Tax Court by McManus and the IRS; an interview with Vernon Acree, a retired IRS executive; and a brief summary of the case included in the report of Leonard Bernard and Richard Stana to the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee on July 27, 1989.
5. Internal Revenue Service Memorandum, February 22, 1989, Strategic Initiative ERR-17: Improve Ethics, Integrity and Conduct Awareness. The memo was directed to all executives and office managers and incorporated the January 23, 1989, decision memo establishing a year-long program designed to improve the agency’s corruption prevention efforts.
6. Harry Jaffe, Philadelphia magazine, March 1987.
7. Charles Toll’s testimony in the Kale trial provided a fascinating portrait of corruption in the IRS. The testimony indicated that, at least in that particular branch of the IRS, corruption had become a systematic and deeply entrenched part of the agency, very similar to what has been repeatedly uncovered in the police departments of New York, Chicago, Miami, and many other big cities. Kale’s trial, United States v. William Kale, Number 86-00050, went before a jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on July 8, 1986. Handling the case was Federal District Judge J. William Ditter, Jr.
9. INFLUENCE AT THE TOP
1. Remarks of Donald C. Alexander, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, prepared for delivery before the Cleveland Tax Institute, Internal Revenue Service News Release, IR–1336, November 15, 1973.
2. Edward T. Pound, “Untoward Tips: How William Simon Led Some Friends Astray on Oil Venture,” The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1986, page 1.
3. The 1947 Commodity Exchange Commission report and the 1950 letter of the secretary of agriculture were cited in an article by Jerry Knight in The Washington Post of July 23, 1981, and in the July 27, 1981, edition of World Business Weekly.
4. Text of Dita Beard memo as released by Jack Anderson, the Washington columnist, The New York Times, March 3, 1972, p. 20.
5. The New York Times, March 16, 1972, p. 1.
6. The New York Times, June 8, 1974, p. 1.
7. Memorandum from Richard J. Davis to Henry S. Ruth, head of the Watergate Special Prosecutive Force, Report of the ITT Task Force, Washington, August 25, 1975, pp, 115–19.
8. The October 1969 ruling, which was to become the center of so much controversy, eventually became known as Revenue Ruling 72–345. This is because 1972 was the year in which most of what previously had been a private ruling was published as a public document.
9. Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 742–53; Ronnie Dugger, The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), pp. 228–29, 258.
10. During the research for his book on Johnson, Caro explains in his note on sources, Julia Gary, the daughter of IRS agent Elmer C. Werner, gave Caro her father’s files on the Brown & Root investigation.
10. PRESIDENTS, POLITICS, AND THE IRS
1. The story about the Navy League’s attack on President Hoover and how it prompted the Hoover administration to launch a secret retaliatory investigation by the FBI and what was then called the Internal Revenue Bureau is told by Kenneth O’Reilly, “Herbert Hoover and the FBI,” The Annals of Iowa, vol. 47, no. 1, summer 1983.
2. One such study is Craig Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert: A Study of Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912—1932 (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1972).
3. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Presidential Secretary Richey, November 2, 1931.
4. “Tax Return Confidentiality: A Report to the Steering Committee for the Internal Revenue Service Project of the Administrative Conference of the United States,” Washington, D.C., July 1975, pp. 6–3.
5. Irey, The Tax Dodgers, pp. xii–xiii.
6. The Justice Department memo, dated January 17, 1934, was written by J. H. McEvers and H. C. Crowter, two department lawyers. It bore the heading, “In re: Andrew W. Mellon.” The seventeen-page single-spaced memo summarizes a number of tax questions concerning the holdings of Mellon and argues they are without merit. It was kindly provided me by the Mellon family in December 1988.
7. Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954) pp. 151–52.
8. Ibid., p. 151.
9. T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (New York: Vintage Books, 1981) p. 5.
10. Irey, The Tax Dodgers, pp. 88–117.
11. Williams, Huey Long, p. 796.
12. Box 369, Confidential Reports About People, 1933, 1934, and 1935, Morgenthau Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
13. Irey, The Tax Dodgers, p. 97.
14. Box 372, Confidential Reports about People, 1940, Morgenthau Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
15. Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 554.
16. Elmer Irey memo to Secretary Morgenthau, June 25, 1941, Box 372, Confidential Reports about People, 1941, Morgenthau Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
17. Report to the Chief, Intelligence Unit, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Washington, D.C. In re: Paul Robeson, p. 13. Box 372, Confidential Reports about People, 1941, Morgenthau Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
18. Box 375, Confidential Reports about People, 1944, Morgenthau Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
19. Tip O’Neill with William Novak, Man of the House, (New York: Random House, 1987). pp. 132–34.
20. Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, August 20, 1974, p. 141.
11. CURBING POLITICAL DISSENT, MAINTAINING THE OFFICIAL LINE, AND SUPPRESSING UNPOPULAR VIEWS
1 The correspondence between the IRS and the Minnesota Association for the Improvement of Science Education and the association’s subsequent exchanges with Senator David Durenberger and two House members was provided me by John D. Bohlig, a lawyer from New Brighton, Minnesota, who served on the association’s board.
2. William J. Lehrfeld, “The Taxation of Ideology,” Catholic University Law Review, vol. 29, no. 50 (1969), pp. 53–54
3. Bruce R. Hopkins, The Law of Tax Exempt Organizations, 5th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1987), p. 4. Hopkins explains that the tax exemption applied to the income tax law approved by Congress in 1894 subsequently was declared to be unconstitutional. With the approval of a constitutional amendment and the passage of the Revenue Act of 1913, however, income tax exemption for selected charities again became the law of the land.
4. Levine’s report and many other IRS documents were obtained as a result of a request under the Freedom of Information Act made on June 14, 1988, by NACLA’s lawyer, Michael Krinsky, who provided them to the author.
5. Charles L. Heatherly, ed., Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration (Washington: The Heritage Foundation, 1981), pp. 934–940.
6. 1948 CCH Income Tax Service. Paragraph 6075, P.S.S-613, February 4, 1948.
7. Lehrfeld, “The Taxation of Ideology.”
8. Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), p. 326.
9. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 269.
10. U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports, Book III, April 1976, p. 847.
11. U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II, April 1976, pp. 53–54.
12. U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book II, April 26, 1967, p. 229.
13. U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Hearings, Volume 3, Internal Revenue Service, October 2, 1975. p. 46.
14. Chronology of the Development of the Special Service Staff of the IRS prepared for the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Foundations, January 1975.
15. Oliver Houck, “With Charity for All,” The Yale Law Journal, vol. 93, No. 8 (July 1984), 1419.
12. OVERSIGHT: WHY THE WATCHDOGS SELDOM BARK
1. The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 30 (New York: James T. White & Company, 1943), pp. 32–33.
2. Harvey O’Connor, Mellon’s Millions: The Life and Times of Andrew W. Mellon (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1935), p. 157.
3. The retaliation against Couzens is described by Blakey and Blakey, The Federal Income Tax, pp. 552–57; Paul, Taxation in the United States, p. 150, and Dubroff, The United States Tax Court, p. 26.
4. Both William Lambert and Sheldon Cohen in separate interviews confirmed the congratulatory telephone conversation from the commissioner.
5. The story about the IRS and Senator Montoya is based on interviews with several of the surviving participants, including Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and Donald C. Alexander, the IRS commisssioner at the time, on Woodward’s story about Montoya that ran in the Post October 19, 1975, and on Montoya’s statement to the Senate about the affair at page S 20608 of the Congressional Record on November 20, 1975. Some background information about the case also came from a deposition completed for the IRS’s Internal Security Division by William B. Orr on March 18, 1976. The subject of this deposition was the information Orr had provided Wood ward concerning Montoya.
6. Much of the information concerning Senator Pryor and his tough-minded efforts to disclose the abuses of the IRS was obtained by covering the hearings of the IRS Oversight Subcommittee, which he heads. The senator also granted me several interviews. Jeff Trinca, a lawyer on the senator’s staff, and Damon Thompson, his press secretary, also were extremely generous in the time they found to explain various aspects of the agency and the senator’s ultimately successful effort to pass remedial legislation.
13. TAX COLLECTION IN THE NEXT DECADE
1. Department of Treasury (Internal Revenue Service), Consolidated Listing of Tax Information Exchanged Between State Agencies and the Internal Revenue Service for Tax Administration Purposes, Document 6724 (Rev. 4–88) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988).
2. National Association of Tax Administrators, Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Workshop, March 22–25, 1987, Willis C. Kartorie, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, “Pennsylvania’s Cross-Matching Initiatives” (Washington, D.C: Federation of Tax Administrators, 1987), pp. 25–28.
3. National Association of Tax Administrators, Proceedings of the Eighth National Workshop, August 24–27, 1986, Pat Callahan, IRS, “Scantel—A Program for Direct Access to Telephone Records for Locating and Contacting Taxpayers” (Washington, D.C.: Federation of Tax Administrators, 1986), pp. 22–23.
4. Working Group on Federalism, White House Domestic Policy Council, The Status of Federalism in America (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, November 1986), p. 1.
5. Ibid., p. 2.
6. Roger H. Davis, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Federal Bureau of Investigation (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, December 1981).
7. Joseph F. Coates, “Scenarios of Five Federal Agencies (1991–95) as Shaped by Information Technology,” a report to the Federal Government Information Technology Project, the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress, June 1985.
8. David Burnham, The Rise of the Computer State (New York: Random House, 1983), p. 192, from a 1971 hearing by the Administrative Practices Subcommittee, Senate Judiciary Committee.
9. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage, 1945), vol. 2, p. 335.
10. Ibid., p. 336.
11. Ibid., p. 337.
14. THE LAST WORD
1. Report and Recommendations, American Bar Association Commission on Taxpayer Compliance, July 1987.
2. Ibid., page 19.
3. Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (Management), Department of Treasury, “A Review of the IRS Executive Selection and Development Program” (Washington, D.C., May 1987).
4. Ibid., p. ii.