Buy health insurance or face wrath of IRS

Last week when I first read Byron York's article titled "Health care reform means more power for the IRS," I felt like I was reading the script of a horror movie. I was in such disbelief that I spent hours looking for the specific section in H.R. 3200 that expanded the powers of the Internal Revenue Service.

Unfortunately, I found it. It's Division A, Title IV on pages 167-215 called Amendments to IRS Code of 1986. The expanded powers of the IRS in H.R. 3200 would empower the IRS to require taxpayers to show proof of health insurance coverage, collect fines on individuals and employers who did not have adequate proof of health insurance and determine whether your health insurance was a government approved plan.

The more I read, the sicker I got because I have been through an IRS audit, and it was the most helpless feeling I have ever had in my life.

It was a more helpless feeling than when I had to ride in the back of the bus growing up in Atlanta in the 1950s and early 1960s, because at least I could choose to walk or catch a ride with a friend when I got sick of the painted notice in the front of the bus that read "Whites seat from front. Colored seat from rear."

I have never shared my IRS audit experience publicly before, because I have devoted a lot of my time and energy trying to replace the tax code with the FairTax (H.R. 25). But my experiences of 13 years ago, which lasted for three years, might help some people realize another terrible aspect of a really bad bill in Congress that the Democrats are trying to shove down our throats.

Ultimately, the IRS conceded that I had not committed any crimes after I agreed to pay some silly penalties and interest on some checks I deposited, which did not match a specific bank deposit slip. In those instances I had gotten some cash back with the deposit, but the IRS called the check amount "unreported income," so I ended up paying taxes on that money twice.

But the final outcome did not make up for those requests for more information that usually came in the mail on Fridays or the day before a holiday with only a few days to respond. Nor did it make up for the hundreds of thousands of after-tax dollars I had to spend to prove I had done nothing wrong.

People who have been through what I went through have experienced the same nightmare or worse. And now the president and the Democrats want to expand the powers of the IRS, which would also expand the opportunities for the IRS to abuse that added power and conduct politically motivated tax audits.

Although my lawyers, professional accountants and I can't prove it, we were all convinced that the audit of my finances for the tax year 1994 was no coincidence. That was the same year I challenged President Bill Clinton during a nationally televised town hall meeting on health-care reform. When the IRS auditors could not find anything for 1994, they expanded the audit to include the tax years 1993 and 1995 to make sure there were no "carry-over issues" as they called it.

The expanded powers in the bill sound simple enough, but so did the original Internal Revenue Code, which has grown from 14 pages in 1913 to more than 9,000 pages today, depending on who's counting. It was also not anticipated that the IRS code would be abused and used against citizens who exercised their rights to disagree with government.

When we consider the expanded powers of the IRS and the 53 new bureaucracies defined in H.R. 3200, it's not just the script of a horror movie. It would be a nightmare for all of us.

I know. I have been there.