The IRS Wants to Know What You Might be Reading

According to a July 30 fundraising letter from the Center for Individual Rights (and this small notice on its Web site), "tax honesty" author Peter Hendrickson has been visited by federal officers, at the instigation of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), asking him to provide them with the name of everyone who has bought his book, Cracking the Code. Seems they are considering his book–in which he carefully reads the existing language of the tax code and comes to conclusions opposite to common understanding or the IRS's insistence, namely that most income we think of as taxable really isn't–an "abusive tax shelter," and an "investment" that fraudulently promises certain tax benefits to its "investors"–what more normal people might call "readers."

I've written on some other figures and ideas in the "tax honesty" movement before, in this May Reason feature. As the CIR notes in its fundraising letter, and I will repeat here, one needn't believe that Hendrickson's arguments are correct to be appalled that the IRS considers buying a book something it needs to investigate. According to the CIR letter, CIR attorney's have gotten an assistant U.S. attorney to ask a District Court to rescind an order that he show up in court to explain why he didn't give the IRS what it wanted, but they aren't sure the IRS will back down.