The IRS is tasked with enabling the collecting of all the taxes owed to the United States government. With a tax code that can often be confusing it’s no wonder that the IRS has grown into the huge bureaucracy that it is today. But the IRS can sometimes be just as confusing as the tax code it is supposed to enforce.
There is a section in the Internal Revenue Manual of the IRS that deals with the collection of taxes during an emergency. The section is titled “National Emergency Operations” and in it, not even a thermonuclear war, or some other disaster will stop the collection of taxes. According to the manual, the IRS would resume the collection of taxes within 30 days of an emergency.
The IRS has guidelines defining how to claim children that were kidnapped. Some of the rules include how long the child was living with the person before and after they were kidnapped. The child can be claimed if the child had lived with the person more than half of the year before or after the kidnapping and presumed to be kidnapped by someone other than a member of the child’s family.
The IRS wants you to claim every form of income, even if it’s illegal. There is an IRS publication that states that a person who receives a bribe must report it on their tax return as income. Technically, income from dealing illegal drugs or robbing a bank is supposed to be declared on an income tax form.
It seems that the IRS can impose taxes that are no longer relevant. In 1898 there was a tax imposed on long distance phone service. This tax was supposed to help pay for the Spanish American war. The problem is that the war ended four months after the tax was imposed. Somehow the IRS let the tax remain for over 100 years until it was discontinued in May of 2006.