The book, due to its date of publication, doesn't reveal, for example, the OMB finding that IRS employees stole over 4300 government computers in 2001 nor does it reveal the results of a 2003 investigation that shows when they aren't busy stealing computers, IRS employees are spending over half their Internet time at the office visiting porn and gambling sites. Because of the date of the research, Roth doesn't include references to many news articles about how IRS employees devote themselves to terrorizing American citizens, selling confidential information, breaking laws with impunity, and running scams like the famous Hoyt Fiasco (well-documented online).
Yet, the book is very useful and important. In it, Roth reveals how individual managers in the IRS are completely unaccountable to any civil authority. He gives case after case of horrendous abuses.
Roth also reveals the steps taken to reign in some of the abuse, and he explains some things ordinary citizens can do to protect themselves. But he also leaves us with an awareness that the IRS is still too powerful, too unaccountable, and too corrupt.
The book should be required reading. An update is long overdue.
The author of the book is a US Senator that headed a congressional oversight hearing looking into the problems in the IRS from '96 to '99. What he found will make you mad as hell and twice as frustrated. Basically he found out that the IRS has become a law unto itself that has grown into a mean-spirited 800 lb. gorilla that cannot now be controlled under the present form of the law.
Roth admits that this mess is the fault of the Congress in its shameful lack of oversight. He notes that basically Congress has given the IRS increasingly sweeping powers without accountability to the point now that they can break the law with impunity.
The book cites many horrifying anecdotes of IRS abuse of citizens' rights and basic human decency all in the name of "making the numbers". The IRS is nothing more than a legalized gang of shakedown artists who use intimidation, fear and nasty mean-spiritedness to squeeze every penny out of the taxpayer that they see as an enemy that must be brought to its knees.
What I found worse than the realization that the government is basically a criminal organization and that the representatives have allowed it to go on was the fact that they now have limited ability to control or reform the IRS. Like a Frankenstein monster that has broken loose and cannot be controlled, the IRS is now so well equipped with sweeping powers that the courts, Congress and certainly we are helpless to its whim despite so called sweeping IRS reform bills passed by Congress in the last four years.
So, in effect, the author shows us what a mess he and his political cohorts have made over the last fifty or so years and then admits that there isn't a heck of a lot that can be done other than limit your profile so the IRS doesn't notice you in the first place. He also talks about your "rights" and how you should act politely and professionally while the IRS is sticking it in and breaking it off even though the preceding 2/3rd of the book were about how the IRS basically ignores taxpayers' rights. While practical in a clinical sense this advice bothered me because it reminded me of the advice you'll get from cops sometimes regarding crime in general: "just give them what they want and they might not hurt you".
Come on! Why the hell aren't these thugs in jail? How can a US Senate committee sit there and hear this kind of testimony, see the figures and get admissions from the IRS itself that this kind of crud is going on and not start slapping on the cuffs? I was really disgusted by this book and it basically sums up what I feel is wrong with our government in general. Forget about "jack-booted thugs" with machine guns kicking down your door in the middle of the night; worry about some bureaucratic piss ant from the IRS with a calculator deciding that you are an easy mark to make his numbers for the month.
Man, what a mess!