Tax Farming Is Back!

(Via Obsidian Wings) One of the very, very worst ideas of pre-revolutionary France is returning with a vengeance, courtesy of the Bush Administration - Tax Farming!:

Within two weeks, the I.R.S. will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers — each of whom owes $25,000 or less in back taxes — to three collection agencies. Larger debtors will continue to be pursued by I.R.S. officers.

The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.

Of course, what it really means is rampant new corruption regarding taxes, as corrupt tax farmers spread out across the land, and eventually we're certain to have tax rebellions. Republicans like to pretend they'd favor such a thing, but their precious military-industrial complex, as well as predictable marketplaces, are totally-dependent on our current, sheeplike, voluntary adherence to tax laws. If that goes, like it did in 18th-Century France, so does the Iraq War, our ability to maintain an Air Force, and just about any certainty in our formerly-comfortable lives!