Elon Musk’s recent push to audit the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has sparked a vital conversation about government overreach and accountability. While an audit is a step in the right direction, it’s a half-measure that fails to address the root of the problem. The IRS isn’t just a flawed institution in need of reform—it’s a relic of centralized control that has long been weaponized to cheat and steal from American taxpayers. To truly restore our republic and realign it with the ideals of liberty and justice this nation was founded upon, congressional leaders, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and President Donald Trump must go further: the IRS must be dissolved entirely.
The IRS has evolved into a bureaucratic behemoth, wielding unchecked power to extract wealth from citizens under the guise of "tax collection." Its complexity—over 74,000 pages of tax code—ensures that even the most diligent Americans can’t navigate it without fear of error or penalty. This isn’t an accident; it’s a design feature. The agency thrives on opacity, enabling it to harass individuals and small businesses while offering loopholes to the well-connected elite. From targeting political adversaries to seizing funds without due process, the IRS has proven itself a tool of coercion rather than a servant of the public.
An audit, as Musk suggests, might expose some of this rot, but it won’t dismantle the system that perpetuates it. Wasteful spending, inefficiency, and corruption are symptoms of a deeper disease: a tax collection apparatus that’s fundamentally at odds with the principles of a free society. The Founding Fathers envisioned a government restrained by the consent of the governed, not one that employs an army of agents to siphon wealth at gunpoint. The 16th Amendment, which birthed the IRS in 1913, was a departure from that vision—a Pandora’s box that unleashed a century of fiscal tyranny.
Congressional leaders have a historic opportunity to act. With DOGE, spearheaded by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, promising to slash government waste, the momentum is there to rethink how we fund our nation. Dissolving the IRS doesn’t mean abandoning revenue—it means replacing a broken system with one that’s simpler, fairer, and less invasive. A flat tax or national sales tax, for instance, could eliminate the need for an agency that employs 80,000 people to harass citizens while losing billions to fraud annually. The IRS’s own data shows it fails to collect hundreds of billions in "tax gaps" each year, yet it still finds resources to audit working-class families over minor discrepancies. This isn’t efficiency; it’s predation.
President Trump, who has long championed tax cuts and deregulation, is uniquely positioned to lead this charge. His first term exposed the deep state’s resistance to change, and the IRS is a cornerstone of that entrenched power. By dissolving it, he could cement a legacy as the president who returned economic sovereignty to the people. DOGE’s mission to streamline government aligns perfectly with this goal—why tinker with a rusted machine when you can scrap it for parts?
Critics will cry that dissolving the IRS is radical, but what’s truly radical is allowing an unaccountable agency to persist. The American Revolution was fought over less taxation without representation than we endure today. Every dollar seized unfairly, every business crushed by audits, every hour spent decoding tax forms is a betrayal of that sacrifice. A republic rooted in individual liberty cannot coexist with an institution that treats citizens as subjects.
Congress, DOGE, and President Trump: don’t settle for an audit. The IRS isn’t salvageable—it’s a parasite on the body politic. Dissolve it. Replace it with a system that respects taxpayers, not one that robs them. The time for half-measures is over. Let’s reclaim the ideals of 1776 and build a government worthy of a free people.
