IRS and Phony Dependents

Once again an editorial in The Times focuses on the micro and ignores the macro. Yes, it’s true, computers can give us the power to squeeze taxpayers for every penny due the government, and the IRS is well-known for using computers like Jimmy Connors uses a tennis racket. When outrage at an exercise of power without due process is appropriate (requiring parents to “register” their 2-year-old babies with a bureaucracy heretofore empowered to issue numbers to “working people,” i.e., people old enough to hold a job!), The Times instead exhibits pious glee at the IRS’ computerized efficiency in collecting taxes. The Times shirks its civic duty, trust and responsibility when it fails to point out these subtle, grievous and insidious governmental incursions into our lives.

Yes, something must be done to bring tax cheaters to account, but a free society cannot long endure when $2.8 billion in taxes is all that stands between dignity and respect for all of our unnumbered children and Uncle Sam’s depleted coffers.

The tax monies accrued by using this reprehensible program will never begin to equal the loss of privacy to citizens.

My Social Security number was issued to me, and proudly accepted by me, at the advanced age of 14. I remember it as a proud rite of passage. It meant that I had a job. The number was for people who work! Not babies!

I fear that as a nation of free people we are in great peril when a major newspaper like The Times fails to see the real violation of our rights as private persons.

DAN PEARSON

Port Hueneme