The new taxpayer bill of rights.

• Author: Schnepper, Jeff A.

SOMETIMES, we get more government than we need, want, or even pay for. Sometimes, rather than being the solution, government is the problem. Sometimes, when the bureaucracy is granted almost unchecked power, the arrogance of that power, coupled with the perceived helplessness of those made subject to incomprehensible regulation, creates a cauldron of unrest and an aura of insecurity. Government should be the servant, not the master, of its citizenry.

Nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than with the Internal Revenue Service. To most American taxpayers, receiving correspondence from the IRS is on a par with spending three weeks in a dentist's chair. The IRS defines an audit as "an impartial review of the taxpayer's return to determine its completeness and accuracy." Former Sen. Edward V. Long of Missouri did not agree. He compared the Internal Revenue Service to a "Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens." His Senate committee found IRS audit and investigative techniques to include defying court orders, picking locks, stealing records, illegally tapping telephones, intercepting and reading personal mail, using hidden microphones to eavesdrop on the private conversations of taxpayers with their lawyers, employing undercover agents with assumed identities, and using sexual entrapment.

On April 26, 1982, in a hearing before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, Rep. George Hansen of Idaho alleged the existence of "IRS Hit Lists, Snooping and Spying Operations, political retaliatory audits ... and arbitrary assessments and seizures for punitive rather than tax collection purposes...." The case against the IRS, however, was presented more strikingly by the alleged victims of Internal Revenue Service brutality, who methodically testified to individual confrontations in great detail, including descriptions of forced detention, physical force, and the use of weapons for intimidation.

As a result of such reports, the Technical and Miscellaneous Revenue Act of 1988 created a consolidated statutory system that addressed a wide range of procedural subjects, including extensive changes in collection procedures. The intent was to promote a better balance between taxpayers' rights and the IRS's authority in administering the Federal tax system. The bill enhanced many safeguards and remedies previously available to taxpayers and established several new restrictions on the procedures governing the assessment and collection of taxes.

While...