Over the past couple of days, I’ve received a number of emails, links, tweets and DMs (whew) about the allegedly IRS-related plane crash in Texas. My immediate reaction to the frenzy, as I tweeted, was this:
Now that a few days have passed, my reaction is the same. While I respect the rights of other bloggers and journos to cover the story till the cows come home, this is one that I’ll largely pass on.
The “manifesto” that was published on the web is not wildly dissimilar to stuff that people email me all of the time about how much they hate the IRS, how the IRS has ruined their lives, how we need a revolution, ya-da, ya-da. There’s nothing new in all of that: the IRS is not popular. People don’t like to pay taxes. I get it, trust me. I don’t like to pay taxes either.
Fortunately, we live in the kind of country that allows you to rant about the IRS and our tax system all you want. And you have the right, whether it makes sense or not, to be as self-destructive as you want in the process. But nobody has the right to force their own unhappiness on others. And that includes destroying property that doesn’t belong to you and it definitely encompasses putting the lives of other people at risk.
What Joseph Stack (the only time you’ll see his name in print on my site) did last week wasn’t admirable. It wasn’t a statement. It wasn’t martydom.
It is murder. It is selfish. It is cowardly. And it is inexcusable.
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Tax girl, you said it just the way I would have.
= why I love this site. Thank you.
Hearing people talk about this incident and say things like, “He has a right to do it” or similiar things is so laughable I am not sure where to start.
First off, the high/high majority of people haven’t a clue about the guys actual situation. Nobody knows about the group he was a part of, nobody knows about the exemptions/deductions that he tried to take, and nobody knows about his insistence of not paying any penalties and STILL trying to go forward with cases that he had no chance of winning.
It was his fault for the situation he was in.
So though the IRS may be terrible in some situations, this was NOT one of them.
I think we should all remember that the IRS doesn’t write the tax code. Congress does. That poor man this idiot killed was just a guy trying to do his job and collect a paycheck to support his family.
What a shame the whole thing is…
Ugh, that “manifest” is such nonsense. “Well, I kept trying to find ways to cheat so I could get rich, but… those stupid government people kept catching me! How unfair! So then I had to use up all of my retirement money because I was too arrogant to get a minimum wage job to survive on while I looked for the next scam! THEY did this to me! They did!”
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