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THE 10 MOST HARMFUL GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS

According to the judges at Human Events magazine, the Internal Revenue Code is our government's most harmful program. At 17,000 pages and 893 forms, enforced by 99,000 federal employees at a cost of $13.2 billion a year, it is a beast indeed. It costs Americans more than $200 billion a year to comply with the code. See the full list here.

1. Internal Revenue Code

Score: 140

Started when: 1913

By whom: Republican President William Howard Taft proposed, and Congress approved, the 16th Amendment in 1909. It was ratified by the states in early 1913, just before Taft left office. Newly inaugurated Democratic President Woodrow Wilson promptly pushed through a progressive income tax. Under President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, the income-tax laws were formally consolidated into the Internal Revenue Code.

Why: To give the federal government a means, over and above tariffs and excise taxes, for raising revenue.

What it does: Takes large sums of money from American workers, and uses the threat of targeted taxation to manipulate the behavior of citizens. Behavior that politicians disfavor is taxed heavily. Behavior they prefer is taxed less, not at all, or even granted tax credits. Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation reports that the current code requires 893 different forms. The Internal Revenue Service has determined it takes Americans a collective 6.6 billion hours each year to complete all the paperwork to comply with the code. As of 2003, the code and its accompanying regulations totaled 17,000 pages.

Cost: In fiscal 2004, the IRS employed 99,000 people and spent $10.2 billion enforcing the code. The Tax Foundation calculates that it cost Americans $194 billion to comply with the code in 2002, and predicts that compliance costs will rise to $244 billion by 2007.

Constitutional provision: The 16th Amendment says: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”