1. The IRS does not designate value to the money that’s extracted from the little guy. The IRS is simply indifferent to the value of the money that it collects.
As long as the IRS exists in a bubble it’s simply not going to care.

2. The executive branch and the legislative branch simply do not care to know where the tax payers money goes as long as it’s extracted. It is not their job to care, it’s their job to maximize and bikini wax the burn rate.

3. No ordinary citizen is allowed to know how their tax money is being used; it could very well subsidize corporate jet purchases, it’s really on a need to know basis.

4. People need to be read their Miranda Rights before paying anything, since the IRS tells Net Jets it’s ok to not take responsibility and it very well tells hard working people to prepare to be tracked down relentlessly because somebody transposed a number on their 1040 EZ, the government is mad as hell about it and isn’t going to tolerate the transposition anymore.

5. Don’t listen to Andrew Ross Sorkin. If you see him on TV, turn the TV off. If you have his book, please return it or use it in the grill to cook your steaks or brats for the 4th of July weekend. If he’s on the radio, turn it off. It’s blasphemy!

1. The IRS does not designate value to the money that’s extracted from the little guy. The IRS is simply indifferent to the value of the money that it collects.
As long as the IRS exists in a bubble it’s simply not going to care.

2. The executive branch and the legislative branch simply do not care to know where the tax payers money goes as long as it’s extracted. It is not their job to care, it’s their job to maximize and bikini wax the burn rate.

3. No ordinary citizen is allowed to know how their tax money is being used; it could very well subsidize corporate jet purchases, it’s really on a need to know basis.

4. People need to be read their Miranda Rights before paying anything, since the IRS tells Net Jets it’s ok to not take responsibility and it very well tells hard working people to prepare to be tracked down relentlessly because somebody transposed a number on their 1040 EZ, the government is mad as hell about it and isn’t going to tolerate the transposition anymore.

5. Don’t listen to Andrew Ross Sorkin. If you see him on TV, turn the TV off. If you have his book, please return it or use it in the grill to cook your steaks or brats for the 4th of July weekend. If he’s on the radio, turn it off. It’s blasphemy!

1)”I can’t remember Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, or any other politician talking about the desperate need to raise tax revenues.”
Really Felix? Have you not listened the President and Congressional Democrats repeated speeches and draft laws defining rich down to 200k/yr income with actual plans pushing that down to below 100k and eliminating many traditional and well established(over decades) tax deductions? I could go on Felix but apparently you were not paying attention to the orator in chief, that’s Ok, I’ve tuned him out too.

2) “Sorkin is clearly saying that the IRS thinks that its job is to maximize the revenue it collects, rather than simply administering the existing tax code in a fair manner. And probably most people who have ever been audited would see it that way. But I genuinely don’t think that’s how the IRS sees it, or, more importantly, how it has been instructed.”
Really? Is that why the IRS has made laws (yes made laws by themselves under “Administrative” rules without vote of Congress) that assume citizens to be a tax cheats and criminals without actual acts or intent over the years? For example of a new sledgehammer law, tax slaves must report all foreign bank accounts even if declared and paid all taxes on, else we are de facto criminals under the law with cruel and unusually high penalties with no relation to the “crime”. There are hundreds of laws on the books that have lost all moorings to intent, facts and harm. On this point Felix I think you should do more research as you are way off base. The IRS will litigate the little guy into the ground and does not recognize clearly correct tax rulings by one Federal jurisdiction in the others.

3) Felix, read the law and read the case. Netjets does have a valid point, and guess what? You can’t appeal the IRS administrative law rules unless you first pay the tax. That’s the law Felix. ARS is naive here though, since ALL tax law is arcane and debated and litigated endlessly. The only guys that can take them on are the big guys, not little guys who the IRS overpowers with their bloated bureaucracy. So on this point you are wrong to judge against Netjets for suing the IRS first. That is the way the system “works” here in the U.S.

4)”if anybody’s contorting themselves to come up novel interpretations here, it’s NetJets, not the IRS. The law is clear:”
No the law is not clear, read the law and the case history before you comment Felix. The interpretation hinges on the IRS “guidance” (sic) concerning the issues of “possession, command and control” by aircraft owners as it relates to “transportation services”. Netjets argument is cogent and meritorious whereas the IRS argument is customarily arcane, inane and subjective for its convenience of overreach.

5)”Sorkin adduces no evidence that Congress didn’t want to apply the transportation tax to private jet owners.”
Here ARS assumes that the reader knows the underlying facts, aka, has done their homework. He is correct and clearly the law applies to “transportation services” i.e. companies such as airlines. Netjets and fractional jet ownership was a Buffet innovation. Private transportation vehicles have not been considered transportation companies offering their services to the public historically by the IRS. It is the IRS that is trying to carve out a new tax here by innovating the law too. Who can blame them “the IRS thinks that its job is to maximize the revenue it collects”. Felix, Fair and IRS are oxymoron to anyone that is clinically alive.

6)”And sixthly, there’s Sorkin’s final rhetorical flourish…”
Well Felix in light of the previous 5 point clarifications who can blame ARS for a little hyperbole since it is Congress (must be that lawyer thing) that writes amorphous laws that make Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s tale of Alice seem concrete in comparison. It is you Felix that is in desperate need, here, of a primer on the three branches of government. ARS correctly points the finger at “Government” and Congress since it is all branches that have created and fostered the fourth branch of government, not the fourth estate of the erroneous press which has forced this educational text, but that of “Administrative Law” under which the IRS flourishes in it own wonderland subjecting the tax slaves of Alice land to its interpretive whims and perverse logics as it writes the law while it “administers” it as well. It was directed to by the Congress too lazy to actually write laws anymore. No wonder that the merry go round of laws and litigation is endless and convoluted when the system has created a large branch of government that not only writes its own rules but administers them too, what a conflict of interest.
In closing Felix I think that ARS has made a good argument that you took at face value without fleshing out the details as good members of the press should do, but ARS was talking to the wonderland insiders who apparently you are not one, but could be if you did your homework, paid enough taxes to reach critical mass or battled the IRS enough times. Count your blessings, you have lived a charmed life.

Very nice piece of forensic work: argument deftly dismantled and each separate piece neatly tagged and laid out on a crisply illuminated table. (I’ve come to call this kind of exercise a Cassidy, in honor of the Great Bike Lane Debate.)

And while we’re on the subject, why shouldn’t the airlines simply convert their various mileage and rewards programs into Seat Leasing Clubs, in which the passengers become member-owners of the airline’s passenger cabins, and therefore eligible to dodge the excise tax as well? And then you just add a nominal “membership” fee to every ticket sale (say a buck, kind of like those old “gentlemen’s club” one-day memberships) and everybody’s off the hook.

Still, so is defending not forcing second lien write-downs and other bank subsidies. There are many roads leading to Rome.