The Internal Revenue Service is reporting that it still has about 5.2 million tax rebate checks which it cannot send out because the people who should get them have not filed a 2007 tax return. According to a report in USA Today, these citizens only need to fill in a few lines on IRS form 1040A, in order to get their money. The IRS says that veterans and retirees, those who could use the money the most, make up the major portion of the population that has not yet received it's rebates. The IRS expects to issue 124 million rebate payments by year's end. So far, about 76.5 million of those payments have gone out.



IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman indicates that, indirectly, the IRS could be part of the problem. Because over the last decade the IRS has regenerated justifiable fear of itself among taxpayers, some people might be hesitant to contact them. Shulman poo-poos that notion. Quoted by USA Today, Shulman stated: "Some people don't want to file a return because they might be afraid of the IRS," he says. "We're really here to help." Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of the callers to the IRS stimulus help line ever get to talk to a live human being.

Now here's the angle. The IRS and income tax enthusiasts maintain that your payment of income tax is voluntary. Yes, they say you pay income taxes because you want to, not because it's required under threat of force. Therefore, if those people who intentionally do not file tax returns were to file form 1040A in order to receive their rebates, they thereby are voluntarily submitting themselves to the system and become complicit in their own "voluntary" taxation by default.