Time: Tue Feb 25 08:32:15 1997
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Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 08:16:46 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: "Rewriting the Code"
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<snip>
>
>Rewriting the Code
>
>A roundtable on tax reform
>
>Edward H. Crane Daniel J. Pilla, Bruce Bartlett, & Grover Norquist
>
>For the first time since the Great Depression, congressional leaders are
>seriously considering sweeping alternatives to the Internal Revenue code.
>Two Texans in the House of Representatives are leading the calls for drastic
>change. house Majority Leader Dick Armey wants to replace the current income
>tax with a single-rate tax with no deductions other than a generous personal
>exemption. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer would instead scrap
>the Internal Revenue Code entirely and replace it with a flat-rate national
>sales tax.
>
>Would either proposal enhance civil liberties and raise enough money to
>operate the federal government? REASON assembled four knowledgeable
>advocates to discuss the possibilities.
>
>No More Kidding Around
>
>By Edward H. Crane
>
>At the end of a brilliant section on taxation from his book Power & Market,
>the late Murray N. Rothbard writes, "Our conclusions are twofold: (1) that
>economics cannot assume any principle of just taxation, and that no one has
>successfully established any such principles; and (2) that the neutral tax,
>which seems to many a valid ideal turns out to be conceptually impossible to
>achieve."
>
>I cite Rothbard's conclusion--which he persuasively develops in the book--by
>way of disclaimer. I do not favor a federal retail sales tax. I support
>replacing the current Byzantine system of financing the federal government
>with a federal retail sales tax. I do so for the simple reason that it will
>make it easier for Americans to reduce their overall tax burden.
>
>We can replace the personal income tax, corporate income tax, inheritance
>tax, gift tax, and the Social Security payroll tax with a simple federal tax
>on retail sales and services of between 25 percent to 30 percent. There are
>economic, civil libertarian, and political advantages to doing so.
>
>Before discussing those advantages, it's worth emphasizing two more
>disclaimers. First, what we are talking about here is a complete replacement
>of the existing federal tax system. Critics of a federal retail sales tax
>who point to the danger of politicians simply adopting the retail sales tax
>on top of reduced rates for the present system have a very legitimate
>concern. The last thing we should want would be a sales tax in addition to
>the taxes we already have. The movement for the sales tax must reject any
>deal that allows the income tax to survive even at one-half of 1 percent.
>
>Second, it must be made clear that we are not talking about a value-added
>tax. The European experience with the VAT makes it clear how easy that tax
>is to increase, primarily because it is hidden at the various levels of
>production. It is true that there will be some problems involved in defining
>"retail sales," but they are not insurmountable problems. The point is that
>the retail sales tax will be much more visible than a VAT and, hence, much
>harder to increase.
>
>A theoretical case for the preferability of a retail sales tax can be made
>on the basis of the fact that consumption is the purpose of an economy. It
>is not investment, saving, or even employment. It is consumption. Government
>lives off of the economy. Let, then, the burden of government fall precisely
>where the economy is headed: on consumption. Such a tax, while
>unquestionably damaging to the economy and our standard of living,
>nevertheless will act to reduce the damage done to the economy compared to
>other taxation schemes.
>
>A study done for the Cato Institute by Boston University economist Laurence
>J. Kotlikoff found that replacing the income taxes with a retail sales tax
>would more than double the savings rate (after all, the whole world outside
>consumption becomes an IRA), increase the capital stock by a third, and
>boost national output by nearly a half trillion dollars. One need not accept
>Kotlikoff's econometric model as an instrument of precision (or even crude
>accuracy) to see that by eliminating the income and inheritance taxes,
>including the tax on saving, there is bound to be a huge boost in output and
>productivity. Entrepreneurial incentives could not be more enhanced within
>the revenue constraints currently imposed by the federal government.
>
>Thus, on the economic front the retail sales tax is an enormous improvement
>on the current system. So is Rep. Dick Armey's proposed flat income tax. It
>has been carefully constructed and, if left alone by politicians, would have
>virtually the same economic impact as the sales tax.
>
>The problem is--and this is where the civil libertarian aspect comes
>in--that the flat tax remains a tax on income and keeps in place the
>Internal Revenue Service. The retail sales tax abolishes both. As the
>readers of REASON are well aware, there is no more intrusive and abusive
>agency of the federal government than the IRS. With a staff of more than
>120,000 agents and auditors, the very mention of the IRS strikes fear in the
>hearts of Americans who, in theory, live in the land of the free.
>
>The list of IRS intimidations, civil liberties abuses, snooping, and general
>ineptitude continues to grow. And for 1995 and 1996 we are promised
>particularly harsh audits, supposedly necessitated by the estimated
>$150-$200 billion in annually uncollected taxes.
>
>Civil liberties abuses under the income tax regime are blatant and well
>documented. We are, for instance, assumed guilty and must prove our
>innocence when charged with violating the Internal Revenue Code, a code so
>complex and illogical that the IRS itself only pretends to understand it.
>The IRS regularly undertakes "civil forfeiture" proceedings that deny
>Americans their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law by
>confiscating property to pay for alleged (but not proven) tax deficiencies.
>
>Moreover, in a study commissioned for the IRS itself a decade ago, Arthur D.
>Little Co. estimated that Americans spend some 5.4 billion hours of work a
>year just to comply with the tax code. Author James Payne puts the cost of
>those hours at about $250 billion per year, or about one-third of what the
>federal government hopes to reap from individual and corporate income taxes
>in 1995. In addition, Payne argues, the true cost of compliance should
>include the disincentives to savings and work and the costs of enforcement,
>litigation, and tax-distorted investments. All that could easily double the
>cost of this bizarre tax system to the American people.
>
>Another benefit of switching from a high-compliance-cost system to a
>low-cost system is that it would free 120,000 tax bureaucrats and untold
>tens of thousands of bright lawyers and accountants in the private sector to
>engage in productive work that increases our standard of living--and would
>probably make them feel better about themselves, to boot. Flat-tax
>advocates' arguments that a sales tax would have high compliance costs are
>disingenuous; 45 states already collect sales tax.
>
>But the best reason to support replacing the income tax with a retail sales
>tax is political. Today when someone mentions tax reform, Americans wisely
>grab their collective wallets. The politicians and bureaucrats of the New
>Class have down to a science the business of playing one tax-paying group
>off against another: farmers against manufacturers, rich against poor, old
>against young, workers against management, and on and on.
>
>The tax system in America is so complex that it's virtually impossible to
>create a sense of taxpayer solidarity against taxes. Rather, each interest
>group spends its time lobbying to increase taxes on other groups in the
>(usually) futile hope that its own taxes can be reduced. That the complexity
>of the tax code is a key to the politicians' ability to continually increase
>taxes while constantly talking about decreasing them should be obvious.
>
>The federal retail sales tax ends all that. Whether it's set at 20 percent,
>25 percent, or 30 percent, Americans need only vote for the candidate who
>promises to lower it--the most. Suddenly we do have taxpayer solidarity.
>Suddenly, with no withholding or other hidden taxes, everyone is aware of
>the cost of government every time he or she buys a product. Lowering federal
>taxes suddenly becomes much easier.
>
>The flat income tax was the cutting-edge initiative during the Reagan years,
>and many supply-siders such as Bruce Bartlett, Jack Kemp, and Grover
>Norquist still support it for that reason. But the mood of the American
>people is considerably more radical today. They want to abolish the income
>tax, and it would be a tragic error to allow old political allegiances to
>get in the way.
>
>The energy behind abolishing the income tax and eliminating the IRS is the
>same energy behind the term-limits movement: No more kidding around. No more
>trusting the politicians to do what they say they'll do. After passing a
>statute, Congress should report out a constitutional amendment, replacing
>the 16th Amendment and limiting federal revenue to taxes on retail sales and
>services. The people want to take back control of government and then
>radically downsize it. That means cutting spending, which first requires
>cutting taxes, which is what the federal retail sales tax will make much
>more feasible.
>
>When Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) campaigns for the presidency on a platform
>calling for the abolition of income taxes and Bill Archer (R-Tex.), the
>chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, says he favors
>scrapping income taxes and replacing them with a sales tax, you know this is
>no longer an idea confined to the political fringes.
>
>If mainstream politicians like Archer and Lugar feel that intensity of
>public support for this idea, the time has come for all advocates of a free
>society to lend a hand. This is an enormous opportunity to role back the
>power of government in our lives. It is an opportunity to tell your federal
>bureaucrat, "Look, I appreciate your interest, but please get out of my
>face--you'll get yours when I buy something."
>
>Edward H. Crane is president of the Cato Institute.
>
>Killing the IRS
>
>By Daniel J. Pilla
>
>Are you fed up with the annual ritual of gathering bags of receipts, poring
>through pages of convoluted tax forms, and working into the night on the
>mind-numbing task of preparing your income tax return? Does the idea of
>filing your tax return on a postcard appeal to you? Does the thought of an
>IRS audit terrify you?
>
>If so, you are among the millions ready for a radical change to our tax
>system. A driving force behind the push is the frustration of dealing with
>the Internal Revenue Service.
>
>The IRS wields awesome powers. It can execute wage and bank levies, seize
>property, and obtain your most personal records, all without a court order.
>Even worse, you are presumed guilty in virtually all your dealings with the
>IRS; unlike the common criminal, you must prove your innocence. Since our
>tax law consists of 17,000 pages of regulations, compliance is often an
>impossible task.
>
>And while the IRS holds the average citizen to inexorably high standards of
>compliance, the IRS itself doesn't meet the mark. In 1993, the General
>Accounting Office issued the results of its first audit of the IRS. In
>testimony to Congress, Comptroller General Charles Bowsher explained that
>the IRS was unable to account for 64 percent of its $6.7-billion 1992
>appropriation. Despite repeated promises to reform, a 1995 GAO report
>explained that the IRS's own internal audits revealed that its financial
>statements are "still not accurate, reliable or consistent."
>
>The IRS's inability to manage itself is visited upon the public in a big
>way. In 1995, the IRS will assess between 32 million and 34 million
>penalties against individuals and businesses. However, its own annual
>reports indicate such penalties are wrong about 40 percent of the time.
>Further, the IRS will issue over 10 million computer-generated correction
>notices, claiming citizens have made errors in their returns. Numerous GAO
>reports show those notices are incorrect about 50 percent of the time.
>
>In 1993, the IRS announced a plan to increase its face-to-face audit
>coverage by 500 percent. This year alone, the number is expected to grow by
>100 percent. This explosion is based on the agency's belief that citizens
>underreport their incomes. Yet its own audit results are wrong about 50
>percent of the time.
>
>The average face-to-face audit nets about $5,000 in increased tax and
>penalties. Thus, the agency's inability to perform its administrative tasks
>correctly leads to billions of dollars in improper assessments.
>
>As if the ineptitude is not bad enough, IRS invasiveness into private lives
>of all Americans has reached new heights. Driven by the belief that citizens
>underreport their income, the IRS announced plans in December 1994 to begin
>two very troubling programs. The first involves a system of recordkeeping
>designed to give the agency "on-line access" to records held in all public
>and private databases.
>
>The agency plans to link its computers with "commercial sources, state and
>local agencies, construction contract information, license information from
>state and local agencies...and information on significant financial
>transactions from reviews of periodicals and newspapers and other media
>sources." IRS computers will be able to track every financial move of every
>citizen.
>
>The second program, announced last year, is an audit endeavor known as the
>District Office Research and Analysis program. DORA audits have little to do
>with tax returns. Rather, they involve "lifestyle audits." Citizens will be
>targeted for DORA audits on a random basis, and audit results will be used
>to develop statistical formulas to be applied on a broader scale. To
>ascertain whether someone is living beyond his means and therefore more
>likely to have understated income, an IRS training manual titled Components
>of Economic Reality instructs agents to evaluate a target's home and
>neighborhood, furniture and fixtures, educational and personal background,
>cultural and family background, toys and hobbies, vacations and gifts,
>clothing and jewelry, and on and on.
>
>Expect auditors to interview one's friends and neighbors, family members and
>children, business associates and co-workers. The information will then be
>codified into personal dossiers. The idea is to use the information to catch
>people in the act of underreporting income.
>
>No doubt such a program will have a serious effect on privacy rights.
>Without factual justification or probable cause, these are the most deeply
>invasive investigations imaginable in
>a free society. Given the IRS's track record of unreliability with its own
>affairs, these programs are outrageous, indefensible, and dangerous.
>
>Personal freedom and privacy cannot survive in the face of such
>invasiveness. And a tax law of 17,000 pages is fertile ground for
>germinating IRS abuse of taxpayers' rights. It seems clear that if freedom
>is to survive, we must eliminate the IRS.
>
>Alternative roads lead in two directions. First is the flat income tax,
>under which Americans would pay a flat rate on income without the current
>confusing myriad of loopholes. Proponents claim the flat tax could be so
>simple as to allow citizens to file their returns on a postcard. The second
>alternative is a national sales tax. This system promises to eliminate
>personal tax returns, as all tax is paid at the checkout counter. Which
>course should America pursue?
>
>To answer this question, we must first address the threshold question: Under
>which system will Americans be free of the invasive, capricious, and
>error-prone behavior of the IRS? This question must guide our debate, and it
>leads to one inexorable conclusion: Freedom and an income tax cannot
>co-exist in the same society. One must necessarily drive out the other.
>
>It is inarguable that a flat tax is simpler to report than our current
>income tax. Preparing a return will be less exasperating if it can be filed
>on a postcard. But the flat tax still requires the IRS. It requires the
>filing of tax returns, which can and will be audited. And it requires
>elaborate recordkeeping by citizens and allows invasive investigations.
>
>Any system which requires IRS administration must necessarily fall under
>deep suspicion. It is simply unreasonable to ask Americans to submit to the
>arbitrary whim of an agency which itself cannot perform the tasks it demands
>of the public.
>
>Because it requires a tax return, the flat-tax system cannot eliminate IRS
>abuse. Though there may be no deductions to audit, the IRS will nevertheless
>insist on auditing one's income. This is the reasoning behind the
>outrageously invasive DORA audits. Nothing in a flat-tax system can or will
>stamp out such abuse.
>
>Because lifestyle audits are so broad, we can expect recordkeeping
>requirements to increase, not decrease, under a flat tax. Any income tax
>system is dependent on massive reporting to the government of income
>information. At present, this is accomplished through the annual filing of
>some 1.3 billion information returns, such as IRS Forms 1099 and W-2. Since
>enforcement of a flat tax is dependent upon income information, look for the
>number to triple as IRS traces every nickel you earn.
>
>There is little about a flat-tax system that will trim the staggering cost
>of tax law compliance. At present, this burden is estimated at $700 billion
>annually. Much of the cost is associated with recordkeeping and tax law
>enforcement, neither of which is reduced by a flat tax. A flat tax certainly
>involves a simpler tax return, but return preparation is the smallest
>component of tax law compliance.
>
>The solution to our tax problem is to adopt a national retail sales tax in
>place of the personal and corporate income tax. Only a sales tax can
>eliminate the invasiveness of the IRS, since one's income and lifestyle are
>irrelevant. When one spends money, the tax is simultaneously assessed and
>collected. That is why only a sales tax can reach the underground economy.
>The IRS's chief compliance problem is the alleged failure of citizens to
>report their income. A flat tax will not capture this income because to do
>so it must be voluntarily reported.
>
>Best of all, a sales tax can eliminate the IRS. The 50 states could collect
>it in concert with their own sales tax. The federal government would bear
>the costs but they would be minimal as all but a few states already have a
>sales tax. For the same reason, virtually all businesses are equipped to pay
>it. Those businesses which do not now collect a sales tax would still see a
>reduction in compliance costs because of the elimination of the complex
>federal income tax laws.
>
>The states would in turn pay the tax to the federal government. This reduces
>the federal tax collection points from 200-plus million (the number of tax
>returns filed annually) to just 50.
>
>Only a sales tax eliminates the need for individual audits, recordkeeping,
>and enforced tax collection, and it can eliminate the staggering
>$700-billion annual compliance cost. In short, the national sales tax is the
>only way to get the federal government out of your life.
>
>Daniel J. Pilla is a tax litigation consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota, and
>the author, most recently, of How to Fire the IRS (Winning Publications).
>
>Flat-Out Better
>
>By Bruce Bartlett
>
>The best tax reform that could be enacted by Congress would be to adopt the
>Hall-Rabushka flat-rate tax proposal. Named for economists Robert Hall and
>Alvin Rabushka of Stanford's Hoover Institution, the Hall-Rabushka proposal
>was first put forward in a Wall Street Journal article on December 10, 1981,
>and has since been elaborated in three editions of their book, The Flat Tax.
>The most recent edition has just been published by the Hoover Institution
>Press. Versions of the Hall-Rabushka plan have been sponsored by Rep. Dick
>Armey (R-Tex.) and Sens. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and
>Arlen Specter (R-Penn.).
>
>In brief, the Hall-Rabushka plan would establish a single tax rate of 19
>percent on all personal and business income. Businesses would be taxed on
>their gross revenue less cash wages, salaries, and pensions paid (but not
>benefits); purchases of goods, services, and materials used in business; and
>all capital equipment, structures, and land. Individuals would be taxed on
>their wages, salaries, and pensions received, less a large family allowance.
>A family of four would have to earn $25,500 per year before it paid any
>income tax. Note that individuals would pay no tax whatsoever on interest,
>dividends, or capital gains received. Moreover, the system is so simple that
>businesses and individuals alike would be able to file their tax returns on
>a form the size of a postcard.
>
>Although they have always referred to their proposal as a flat tax, I prefer
>to think of it as a single-rate tax plan. This is because the central
>element of the Hall-Rabushka plan is to tax all income only once. And it is
>not truly a flat tax because those with higher incomes will pay higher
>effective tax rates, although the marginal rate will be the same for all.
>
>The importance of this distinction gets at what I believe is the major
>problem with our current tax system, which is that some forms of income are
>taxed two, three, or more times while others are not taxed at all. Thus we
>have close to confiscatory rates on some forms of capital income, while a
>considerable portion of labor income--in the form of fringe benefits--is
>entirely free of tax.
>
>In the aggregate, we tax less than half of all personal income. In 1992,
>personal income as defined by the Commerce Department came to $5.2 trillion,
>yet taxable income as defined by the IRS came to just $2.4 trillion. This
>means that in theory a 9.2-percent tax rate on all personal income would
>raise the same revenue that the individual income tax raises today at an
>effective rate of 19.2 percent, with marginal rates between 15 percent and
>39.6 percent.
>
>However, the effective tax rate on capital income can go far higher than
>39.6 percent. Consider a dollar of increased corporate profit. Looking only
>at federal taxes, we first take off 35 percent corporate income tax. Then
>whatever is paid out to the corporation's owners--the shareholders--is taxed
>again up to a 39.6-percent rate. This adds up to better than a 60-percent
>tax on the original dollar of profit. But we aren't finished yet, because if
>the higher profit leads to a higher stock price, we tax that profit again
>when the stockholder sells his shares, even though the stock price merely
>reflects the discounted present value of the future profits that are already
>going to be taxed twice. The capital gains tax, therefore, in effect is a
>third layer of taxation, going up to 28 percent, on the same dollar of
>profit. If we factor in state and local taxes and inflation, it is not at
>all difficult to get tax rates on capital up over 100 percent.
>
>This excessively heavy taxation of capital, combined with widely different
>tax rates on different forms of income, has created enormous inefficiency
>and is, I believe, at the root of our economic malaise. We are collecting
>less revenue for the government at a far higher cost than necessary. The
>compliance cost of the income tax runs into the tens of billions of dollars
>a year.
>
>However, the compliance cost is only a small part of the cost we pay for our
>current tax system. A much larger cost is what economists call the "excess
>burden" of the tax system. The excess burden is the cost to the economy of
>reduced work, saving, and investment that is over and above the amount of
>tax collected. Estimates of the excess burden run into the hundreds of
>billions of dollars per year.
>
>At first glance, it appears that there is no way the Hall-Rabushka tax
>system could possibly raise the same $740 billion that the federal
>government expects to raise in individual and corporate income taxes in
>1995. It also appears to be an enormous giveaway to the rich, who now pay
>rates as high as 39.6 percent on all of their income except capital gains,
>which are taxed at a maximum of 28 percent.
>
>In fact, the numbers in the Hall-Rabushka plan do add up. And it is not
>quite the giveaway to the rich that it appears. In return for gaining the
>ability to expense capital investment, businesses would lose the ability to
>deduct the cost of fringe benefits and interest. Hall-Rabushka would also
>sweep away a long list of business tax incentives currently in law. On the
>individual side, taxpayers would lose the ability to deduct mortgage
>interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes, among other
>things. Also, keep in mind that while interest and capital gains are not
>taxable for individuals under the plan, they are taxable at the business
>level.
>
>The result of all this is to roughly triple current federal revenue from
>taxing businesses, while halving individual income tax revenue. Since
>business income largely accrues to the wealthy, the effect of the
>Hall-Rabushka plan is to raise the actual amount of taxes paid by rich
>people even as their tax rate falls. And this result does not in any way
>depend on any "supply-side" effects on economic behavior, although it is
>clear that there will be a significant impact on saving, investment, and
>work effort. Economist Dale Jorgenson of Harvard, for example, recently
>estimated that if something like the Hall-Rabushka plan were enacted by
>Congress it would lead to an immediate $1-trillion increase in national
>wealth, which was $19 trillion in 1993 (the most recent year for which data
>are available).
>
>Unlike the Tax Reform Act of 1986, however, the Hall-Rabushka plan is not a
>simple trade-off between higher corporate taxes and lower individual taxes.
>Rather, Hall-Rabushka must be viewed as a fully integrated tax system, of
>which the business tax and the wage tax are simply two sides of the same
>coin.
>
>And Hall-Rabushka is by definition a pure consumption tax, because capital
>investment is fully expensed and because individuals pay no taxes on their
>investment income. Thus it is unnecessary to institute any sort of
>specialized saving incentive, such as that proposed by Sens. Sam Nunn
>(D-Ga.) and Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). Their plan, in effect, would force
>people
>to save before they received any tax benefit, whereas Hall-Rabushka simply
>abolishes taxes on saving altogether.
>
>As noted earlier, the Hall-Rabushka plan is not the pure flat- rate tax it
>appears to be. That would require a single rate on gross income, with no
>deductions at all. The effect of a large personal and family allowance is to
>create effective progressivity. Under Hall-Rabushka the effective tax rate
>on wage, salary, and pension income would rise from zero on low-income
>families, to a rate between 3 percent and 12 percent on moderate-income
>families, to 16 percent on a family earning $200,000. Rates continue to rise
>as income rises, although no one would ever pay more than 19 percent.
>
>While there are many other comprehensive reform ideas out there--such as the
>Cato Institute's sales tax proposal--I believe that the Hall-Rabushka plan
>is the best one that has been put forward in terms of fairness and
>simplicity. And it is not a new proposal, but one that has been around for
>almost 15 years.
>
>It has been the subject of previous hearings in the Senate Finance
>Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic
>Committee, and has been discussed in numerous studies and articles.
>Consequently, it is a plan that is familiar and well vetted. Thus, rather
>than reinvent the wheel and try to come up with an entirely new reform
>proposal, I recommend that the Congress simply adopt the Hall-Rabushka plan.
>
>Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy
>Analysis. He was previously deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for
>economic policy. As deputy director of the Joint Economic Committee, he
>organized the first congressional hearing on the flat tax in 1982.
>
>Taxes We Can See
>
>By Grover Norquist
>
>It spoke volumes about the revolutionary expectations of the American people
>and the Republican Congress that only days after the Republicans won a
>majority in the House and Senate on November 8, public debate shot past the
>already ambitious Contract with America to plans for radically restructuring
>the federal income tax.
>
>Public cynicism might well have dwelled on the difficulty of moving a
>balanced budget amendment, line-item veto, tort reform, and term limits
>through the House, much less the U.S. Senate. Yet as unlikely a Jacobin as
>Texas's Bill Archer, slated to head the newly Republican House Ways and
>Means Committee, fast forwarded the political agenda by announcing his
>desire to abolish the federal income tax, root out the Internal Revenue
>Service, and replace the present tax structure with a national consumption
>tax: a sales or value-added tax. Archer's fellow Texan, House Majority
>leader Dick Armey, has weighed in with his own reform agenda: a flat tax of
>20 percent on personal and corporate income for 2 years, to be reduced to 17
>percent thereafter.
>
>When facing such obvious injustices as France's ancien régime, Russian
>czarism, or our own 1040 form, men and women of restrained temperament have
>an understandable urge toward random and immediate violence--and the
>presumption that the destruction of the present unsatisfactory oppression
>

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Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S.    : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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