Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990                   TAG: 9003143292
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by SIDNEY BARRITT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE IRS BUREAUCRACY

Do you ever wonder is you are alone in not understanding 1040EZ, or whichever of the latest "simplified" IRS tax forms you use?

In the Civil War era, when the forms were far simpler, a fairly astute Illinois lawyer overpaid his 1864 taxes by $1,250. He went to his grave that much poorer, but when the error was uncovered eight years after his assassination, at least Abraham Lincoln's estate was repaid.

"A Law Unto Itself" is equal parts horror and delight, and it succeeds so well because it is the most lucid, well-written and well-researched account of how the IRS has woven itself into the fabric of this country that will be written anytime soon. It succeeds because it can be read on several levels.

David Burnham attacks the bureaucracy, sometimes with a stiletto, sometimes with a meat cleaver. Any big bureaucracy - this one is far bigger than the CIA or the FBI, and is just as secretive as either - is bound to have inconsistencies in action and application of policy. The author finds a good many but does not let things rest there. How did matters come to this and how could they be different, he asks by implication. Thus, the book is no simple attack on an unwieldy bureaucracy.

It can also be read as a prescription for reform. How is the IRS managed in the middle and at the top? Tables in the appendix provide some data and direction, but illustrative anecdotes, equally well-documented, are more vivid than pages of dull, dry numbers.

At least in the ideal, an agency like the IRS would be immune from external political influences, yet strictly accountable for all its internal affairs. At least then, it would enjoy the people's confidence - love and popularity being beyond anyone's feelings for a tax agency. Yet, neither condition holds.

From Hoover to Reagan, every administration has bent the IRS to its political will in order to reward its friends and to punish its enemies. We may all applaud when the IRS seeks public targets among organized crime, drug dealers and the like, but seldom do we feel quite so comfortable when unannounced targets turn out to be clergy from the civil rights movement, members of the peace movement or the religious right.

Antipathy to taxation goes back to the roots of the American Revolution, yet, as has been suggested elsewhere, taxes are part of the price of civilization. On whom should the burden fall?

There seems to be no national consensus. The IRS estimates that the tax due on hidden or unreported income would probably be sufficient to erase the national debt, but the book suggests that a large corporation with political clout stands a far better chance of avoiding payment than an ordinary citizen, most of whose earnings are already subject to withholding. What do we want of the IRS? What manner and degree of oversight to we want Congress to exercise?

A reviewer's opinion matters little. "A Law Unto Itself" is required reading for an informed electorate and, particularly so, for its representatives in Congress.