IRS in Its Own Words: "Disburse Social Benefits to Target Populations" #tcot

IRS in Its Own Words: "Disburse Social Benefits to Target Populations"

MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013 The Internal Revenue Service has been in the headlines for more than a week now as details of its targeting of conservative non-profits have trickled out.Senate hearings this week (via Politico) on Apple's tax strategies have indirectly referenced the IRS as well as Democrats decried the huge tech company's efforts to avoid turning over any more of its money than necessary to Uncle Sam's tax collector.  But a 2011 Annual Report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) of the IRS suggests that Apple is simply following the counsel that the TAS offers.
The section of the report in question is called Introduction to Diversity Issues: The IRS Should Do More to Accommodate Changing Taxpayer Demographics. The document begins with some history of the IRS and its mission:

When the federal individual income tax was enacted in 1913, it applied to high-income taxpayers.  At that time, the predecessor to the IRS began as a hands-on collector of various excise and other taxes.  In 1942, Congress enacted the “greatest tax bill in American history” largely to fund the U.S. effort in World War II, expanding the income tax to the middle class.  At this juncture, the Treasury made an historic effort to popularize the income tax, and employed tactics such as famously deploying the Disney cartoon character Donald Duck as a mascot of the public fisc.  Since then, however, the IRS has not made a parallel effort to popularize the income tax to an increasingly diverse population.

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