“Subjects or citizens… is at stake” in the new film Unfair: Exposing the IRS, one of its producers, conservative activist Craig Bergman, stated at a September 26 Value Voters Summit (VVS) screening.  Liberty-minded Americans nationwide would do well to participate in Unfair’s October 14 single-night showing and join what fellow producer Judd Saul at VVS called a “movie movement” for revolutionary tax simplification.

“Few Americans alive… were not born under the slavery” of the current income tax and its enforcer, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), instituted in 1913, Bergman narrates in Unfair and its companion book. America’s government thus existed “for more than a century without an income tax,” taxing instead sales and trade. “For most of our country’s history, we didn’t have an IRS and it functioned fairly well,” limited government activist Grover Norquist states in Unfair.

“Rich people in New England” alone would supposedly pay the income tax, proponents for its enabling Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution argued in 1913, radio talk show host Neil Boortz recalls. Many Christians also supported the amendment in return for the Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition of alcohol and accompanying taxes, conservative writer Ken Hagerty notes. Prohibition came and went, but the income tax remains in an America currently spending about 27% of national income on taxes. Yet a 2% average in the 13 American colonies “was so out of line we had to have a revolution,” Norquist observes.

While leftists “believe morality demands” higher taxes, Bergman justifies low taxes on several grounds, arguing that “[i]ncome should not be distributed” but “earned” and “[c]reation belongs to the creator.”  “[A]s taxes rise, people come to see themselves not as willing social contributors but as victims of exploitation,” nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat observed. A “silent tax revolt” then comes from taxes taking more than a third of people’s income through adjustments in work or income hiding or tax sheltering. “Taxes… have a corrosive impact on our civic life.  Our individual sense of responsibility and trust is destroyed.” Additionally, “high taxes crowd out public giving,” as shown by the United Kingdom, where taxes consume 40% of national income and charitable giving is half that in America.

The “principle source of corruption in our nation’s capital,” though, is “[t]oday’s tax code… incomprehensible… even to tax collectors.” “Our income tax system is nothing more than an organized crime syndicate” to which citizens must report tax information that can be used against them in court, Bergman assesses. The “Mafia operates with at least the honor of not whacking the women and the children,” former governor Mike Huckabee states in Unfair.

Recent “weaponizing” of the IRS against conservative political groups (in Congressman Louis Gohmert’s words,, President Barack Obama’s protestations of “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS notwithstanding, therefore forms Unfair’s focus. An “endless parade of distractions, and political posturing, and phony scandals” fills the rhetoric of Obama and his administration officials in response to IRS corruption allegations. Yet Unfair makes understandable polls cited by Congressman Trey Gowdy in which Americans are more afraid of their government than terrorist attack.

IRS harassment "was effective in shutting down the most significant… social movement in a generation in America” in the 2012 election, namely Tea Party groups, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton notes. “That’s how you steal an election in blind sight.”  An IRS “war of attrition” against a naturalized American from Mexico seeking tax-exempt status for a Tea Party organization reminded friends of totalitarian conditions in their Cuban and Venezuelan homelands. “It’s really scary,” she says, “because America is an exceptional country and now the government has been expanding over and over.”

Organizations “connected with Israel” and its “occupied territories” (like the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron) receive special IRS treatment as well, Zionist Z Street founder Lori Lowenthal Marcus similarly learned. “You Jews are different,” a friend commented to Marcus about her IRS treatment, something “a little scary” for Marcus. “You have to know your boundaries,” an IRS agent meanwhile said to a Polish-American pro-life activist whose parents endured Nazi occupation and Communist dictatorship.

Even parents seeking an adoption tax credit experienced the IRS in totalitarian terms. One couple did not adopt a girl “out of China, out of the control of one oppressive government… to bring her home to put her under another oppressive government.” IRS auditing “makes us feel like s**t,” a veteran meanwhile said of his Texas American Legion post’s auditing. “It wasn’t worth… the year that I spent Vietnam for this country, for what Obama’s doing to us right now.” “Buddy, your day is coming,” he warns others.

IRS political warfare is nothing new. Fitton, Norquist, and former National Rifle Association (NRA) David Keene all speak of similar dirty tax tricks under President William Clinton, something that cost the NRA millions in compliance costs. “What do you expect when you sue the president,” an IRS official auditing Judicial Watch said to Fitton. Yet the IRS refused to audit President Richard Nixon’s enemies, Keene says.

Many churches, though, have defied the unconstitutional 1954 Johnson Amendment prohibiting commentary on candidates for office by houses of worship, something the IRS has consistently refused to litigate. “I’m not going to get up on a Sunday morning and go to the IRS tax code and see what it is I am supposed to be preaching on,” Cornerstone World Outreach Pastor Cary Gordon, says. This would mean “getting our theology from IRS tax code instead of developing our theology from what the Scriptures clearly state,” although the “Scriptures are filled with political issues.”

The IRS “isn’t about revenue” but “intimidating people,” Bergman concludes. “That’s just the way it is” Bergman has encountered from many resigned to IRS targeting, but Marcus warns those acquiescing in liberty’s loss “you’re getting on the same boxcar I am.” IRS merrymaking, meanwhile, cost $50,000 for 200 luxurious leadership conferences between 2010 and 2012 and $65,000 for training videos spoofing Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island.

“Under the ideal system, an individual would be sovereign over his income, salary, and savings,” Bergman concludes.  “Unfortunately, that ideal disappeared in 1913.”  Bergman thus advocates replacing an often inscrutable income tax with a simple sales tax nationwide. While others have alternatively advocated various forms of flat income-tax system, either approach recognizes the fundamental flaws of ignoring a governmental Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) rule.

Legal intricacy inherently injures the weak in favor of the powerful, whether public or private actors, who have the knowledge and the resources to exploit details to their advantage. This particularly concerns taxation, perhaps the most important citizen-state relationship in modern societies where welfare systems have grown and military conscription has withered. As Unfair demonstrates, Americans deserve a clear tax relationship with their republic without a monstrous mediator like the IRS.