Column By Mike Bibb
Finally, it looks like the Internal Revenue Service will be treated to some justice of their own.
With April 15 quickly approaching, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced the appointment of two former IRS agents to investigate and recommend changes to the Service.
These two agents were also involved in revealing the cover-up, discrepancies, and favoritism shown to Hunter Biden in his tax scandal.
With the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exposing other departments’ waste, fraud, and abuse, it can now add the IRS’ well-recognized intimidation, fear tactics, and sometimes prosecution of individuals it has targeted.
All in the name of enforcing “Voluntary Compliance” by making sure businesses and citizens “Pay their fair share.” Or whatever the IRS considers a fair share, on any given day, at any given time.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R) urged the hiring of former IRS agents Gary Shipley and Joseph Ziegler. The senator commented, “Gary Shipley and Joe Ziegler put their entire careers on the line to stand up for the truth, and instead of being thanked, the Biden administration treated them like skunks at a picnic.”
Grassley said, “Far too many whistleblowers share a similar experience of retaliation. I hope today is the first of many redemption stories for whistleblowers who’ve been mistreated. By taking a stand for whistleblowers, President Trump and his cabinet are ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability.” — Newsmax, Mar. 18, 2025.
Readers may recall that in July 2023, the two agents testified that President Biden’s Justice Department interfered with Hunter Biden’s IRS criminal investigation. The charges were “slow-walked” and eventually cancelled by the expiration of the statute of limitations.
In October 2024, the same two agents reported that the DOJ, FBI, and IRS all knew the information contained within Hunter’s abandoned laptop computer was authentic but failed to prosecute him, fearing adverse publicity for Joe’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Instead, the phony excuse that it contained Russian information implicating Donald Trump was released to the media. Not checking facts, the mainstream press jumped on the bogus charges and continually accused Trump of the fake accusations.
Of course, the scam was exposed later, but by then, Joe had been elected to the White House.
Just before leaving the Presidency in January 2025, Joe pardoned Hunter and other members of his family for any criminal activity that may have occurred in the past or in the future.
Currently, these Executive Orders are doubtful to be authentic since they appeared to have been signed by an Autopen rather than Joe’s actual hand. In other words, it hasn’t been established whether Joe was present at the time of signing the EOs or was somewhere else.
Also, the Supreme Court will decide whether Joe is lawfully allowed to pardon someone who has yet to be indicted, tried, and convicted of a crime.
Whoever heard of pardoning a person before a crime was committed? Only in Joe’s head, I guess.
These screwups, and many more, occurred during Joe’s term in office. Practically every department of government was overstaffed, overbudgeted, and overspent its annual allocations.
Sometimes by billions of dollars.
Case in point: Joe Biden wanted to hire about 60,000 additional IRS workers. On a per-state basis, that would work out to about 1,200 more federal revenue employees. Of course, more populous states would have more tax collectors than less populous states.
Trump’s Administration thought this wasn’t a good idea. With the debt now approaching $37 trillion, hiring more tax collectors to go after more of the people’s money seemed counterintuitive.
Collecting taxes isn’t the problem — excessive government waste, spending, and borrowing are.
Not difficult to figure out.
What is easy to understand is that we’re reminded that it takes three or four months 1/4 to 1/3 of a year — for people to work just to pay their income taxes.
Also, a few DOGE workers may have realized that not all taxes collected “from whatever the source” are actually legitimate income taxes.
In fact, there is a distinct difference between what a corporation earns in yearly revenues and what an ordinary wage earner is paid. The two obtain their money in entirely dissimilar ways.
A small business, company, or corporation makes money by selling a product or service and hiring people to produce it. In some cases, these workers are few, and in other instances, hundreds or thousands are employed.
An individual wage earner only offers his time and efforts. He has no product or service to sell. As a result, he/she is paid what the employer is willing or required (minimum wage) to pay.
Unlike a business, a wage earner usually has no financial investment, gain, or income received from the company. He/she simply receives a weekly check (remuneration) for their time and labor. There is no additional profit added.
This is how the 16th Amendment was originally established in 1913. Congress designed it to be a tax on incomes earned by businesses and corporations. It wasn’t intended to apply to individuals, as that was already forbidden by the Constitution—Article 1, Sections 8 & 9.
The 16th Amendment has never been amended to include individual wages, and Art. 1, Sec. 8 & 9 have never been repealed. These two sections of the U.S. Constitution are just as valid now as when they were ratified.
Only today has the IRS, in cahoots with federal district courts, perverted the original meaning and intent of the 16th Amendment to currently imply that all monies “from whatever the source” are to be considered “income,” including an individual’s wages.
A gross distortion of the 16th Amendment’s fundamental purpose and an obvious overreach by unelected activist bureaucrats and judges.
Anyone with three brain cells connected can easily distinguish the difference between corporations, which receive millions and billions of dollars yearly, and a single wage earner, who pulls in less than $35,000 annually.
Corporations have the advantage of passing on their tax obligations to the consumer by including these costs within the price of their product.
A wage earner does not have this option. The only allowable deductions are those the IRS says he can take. He can’t hand off this burden to anyone else.
Not a very “fair” system by any means.
To lump the two into the same taxing procedure is a blatant injustice of our laws and Constitutional prohibitions against such foolishness.
It is with great anticipation that President Trump’s intended reform of the Internal Revenue Service and DOGE’s in-depth examination of this reckless government agency will finally realign the IRS back to its original mission: collecting income taxes from businesses and other organizations that actually earned an income.
If that means firing the top echelon of IRS management and laying off over half its staff, then so be it.
Good riddance, adios and sayonara. Go get a real job, and quit pestering the folks who are only trying to make a living!
