I rarely think of the Internal Revenue Service as a “service:” when it takes my money, I don’t think the agency is serving me. But in this case, it really did perform a service: It reminded us of who its agents are and of the fact that they are willing to use deadly force “if necessary.”

Various other commenters have noted that this is not something new. For many years, the IRS has had about 2,000 agents who carry guns and are willing to use deadly force. I knew that. Maybe you knew that. But a lot of people probably didn’t.

This is from my latest TaxBytes piece for the Institute for Policy Innovation. It’s titled, “The IRS Shows Its Guns,” IPI, August 17, 2022.

Read the whole thing, which is very short.