Doth The IRS Shooteth ?

Stumbling around the internet, I ran across a strange story to the effect that the Internal Revenue Service is buying shotguns.

There is a site called BizOpp.gov that announces probable purchases and notices of intent to purchase.

They are starting with 60 Remington 12-gauge, short-barrelled pump models (like civlians are barred from owning).

Now, you know that 60 "sawed-off" shotguns will not "cover" all the USA. So it might be inferred that there is, in planning, an "Elite" squad of heavy hitters to send to brazenly recalcitrant tax cheats. (Treasury Secretary Geithner, maybe ?)

The income tax has been called "Progressive" and "Regressive" and has never been popular.

In the year 10 (AD or CE-if-you are PeeCee) the first emperor of the Han dynasty imposed the first income tax. He was dismembered and overthrown within twelve years and the tax "repealed".

Sadly, after being embarrassed by "the colony" of America, Great Britain, under Prime Minister William Pitt (the younger) sought to recoup its losses and brace for the Napoleonic Wars with an income tax of two pence per year on 400-pound incomes.

Lincoln and congress imposed the first American income tax in 1861 to pay for the Civil War, and upped the ante in 1862.

The graduated income tax, corporate income tax and inheritace taxes all came into existence during a fit of "Progressivism" in the first 15 years of the 20th century, during the fervor that took election of Senators away from the state legislatures and gave it to the people.

Then, in most of our lifetimes, came the stealth payroll tax, promising "refunds" to lower income earners and blossoming into gifts to non-taxpayers.

Some call it "confiscation". Some call it "Patriotism".

But shotguns are a new calling card for the tax adjuster.