IRS Adopting Tactics Of Ancient Rome?

IRS pays whistleblower $104 million ... The Internal Revenue Service has awarded an ex-banker $104 million for providing information about overseas tax cheats — the largest amount ever awarded by the agency, lawyers for the whistleblower announced Tuesday. Former Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld is credited with exposing widespread tax evasion at Swiss bank UBS AG. Birkenfeld himself served roughly two and-a-half years in prison for a fraud conspiracy conviction related to the case, which resulted in a $780 million fine against the bank and an unprecedented agreement requiring UBS to turn over thousands of names of suspected American tax dodgers to the IRS. − AP

Dominant Social Theme: Go get those tax cheats.

Free-Market Analysis: The famous author Charles Adams once observed that governments who overtax their citizens are nearly always "hoisted on their own petard."

Adams wrote an expansive book about government tax history entitled For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization. His main thesis was that tax policy shaped the course of civilization for good or bad.

Today it begins to look as if US tax policy is tipping over into the bad. Of course, some would say that happened long ago, as far back as the Whiskey Rebellion that George Washington stamped out.

The kind of whistle blowing that the IRS is encouraging is verging on what ancient Roman tax authorities would do when they'd authorize civilian deputies to collect taxes for a percentage.

Adams explains that this was toward the end of the empire when citizens were increasingly refusing to cooperate with what was seen as a bloated, corrupt Leviathan. It can be said that the end of the Roman Empire came because its citizens simply didn't feel the civilization was worth fighting for. And thus, the barbarians arrived at the gates – and then overthrew them.

Grant that taxes are necessary – even in the modern central banking era. Still, US policies are not improving from a tax standpoint. Is a Roman dénouement on the way? Who can say? Trends are questionable at best.

More