Stockman’s Bill: The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act

When it comes to taxes, wouldn’t you love to be able to use the same annoying excuses as the IRS?

Rep. Steve Stockman (TX) thinks so. He even came up with the legislation.

It’s called “The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act” and it would apply to taxpayers who fail to provide documents requested by the IRS.

While the IRS is constantly pushing taxpayers to file, pay, and respond within a strict timeframe (or else), the agency rarely seems to be in a rush to complete its own tasks. Have you ever waited anxiously for months to receive your tax refund? Then maybe you know what I mean.

Stockman doesn’t think that taxpayers should be forced to obey laws that IRS employees refuse to follow themselves.

The most recent (and public) incident occurred earlier this month, when the IRS refused to provide emails that could implicate agency employees in illegal targeting of conservative advocacy groups. Lois Lerner, the former Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, is at the center of the controversy. The IRS claims it has lost all of Lerner’s emails because of a “computer glitch” that erased the hard drives… and then the hard drives were destroyed for recycling purposes. Are you buying it?

Here is the full text of Stockman’s bill:

 

The resolution may be cited as the “Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Resolution.”

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must allow taxpayers the same lame excuses for missing documentation that the IRS itself is currently proffering

Whereas, the IRS claims that convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction is sufficient justification not to produce specific, critical documentation; and,

Whereas, fairness and Due Process demand that the American taxpayer be granted no less latitude than we afford the bureaucrats employed presently at the IRS;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that unless and until the Internal Revenue Service produces all documentation demanded by subpoena or otherwise by the House of Representatives, or produces an excuse that passes the red face test,

All taxpayers shall be given the benefit of the doubt when not producing critical documentation, so long as the taxpayer’s excuse therefore falls into one of the following categories:

1.         The dog ate my tax receipts
2.         Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3.         Traded documents for five terrorists
4.         Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5.         Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6.         Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7.         Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8.         Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9.         Was short on toilet paper while camping
10.       At this point, what difference does it make?

In any case, IRS can see the NSA for a good, high quality copy.

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