The IRS is apparently planning to pay off stool pigeons who turn in their tax cheating neighbors. In principle, I don't disagree with the concept. The government has been putting prices on criminal's heads for over 150 years. The problem is that the IRS is not a law enforcement agency, and doesn't play by their rules. In fact, Congress has been looking at the IRS' overzealous gestapo tactics for years.

In my home town of Virginia Beach, the story of a local restaurant, The Jewish Mother, is well known. The restaurant was raided and shut down by IRS goons, on nothing more than the word of a disgruntled employee.

Colaprete's restaurant, his home, and the home of his manager were raided by IRS agents on the say-so of a former Jewish Mother bookkeeper who was trying to wriggle out of an embezzlement rap. The effort didn't work (she later became an unwilling guest of the state of North Carolina), but the results were what Colaprete himself referred to as a "dance with the devil."

By raided, I mean they marched in and stuck guns in the faces of employees. Knives and forks were taken out of customer's hands, and anything with numbers on it was thrown into the back of a government van. After about 6 months, all the files, books, cash registers, and computers were dumped on the front doorstep without so much as an apology, and no charges filed.

The accuser it turns out, had a history of embezzlement. The owner of the Jewish Mother, John Colaprete, was preparing to file a complaint against her for embezzling $40,000. She had initially approached the FBI, but they wouldn't touch it. They didn't find her to be credible. The IRS didn't bother to make any checks into her background, and took the story at face value. They just rolled in with the swat team and started cracking heads. In the end, Colaprete never fully recovered, and was forced to close one of the two Jewish Mother locations.

Congress has tried to crack down on the IRS's tactics, but I'm far from convinced.