I guess I shouldn’t be surprised in this new era of authoritarianism which has given us illegal renditions, imprisonment without trial, and state sanctioned torture, but the IRS just set up a Whistleblower Office that gives you a cut of the profits if you inform on somebody not paying their taxes.

That’s right. If your employer, co-worker, landlord, neighbor or father-in-law is raking in fistfuls of cash and bypassing Uncle Sam, you can anonymously report the abuse to the IRS and snag a windfall from their dishonesty. As long as the total amount of tax fraud comes out to at least $2 million (including penalties, interest, and whatever else the government ultimately collects based on your report), you can get a 15 to 30 percent cut.

On the surface this may seem like a good idea. We’ll certainly uncover those dirty tax cheaters now. If you’ve got a secret off-shore account you better hope you never mentioned it to any of your in-laws, and divorces just got a lot more interesting. It certainly feels like justice is being done–everybody needs to pay their fair share after all, and there’s nobody to blame but yourself if somebody informs on you.

But this is a *major* change, not just to the way our government collects taxes, but to the way the United States monitors its citizens. I pay my taxes, so this shouldn’t affect me, right? Wrong. The IRS just put a price on my head. How long will it be before there are tax cheat headhunters that will stake me out, go through my trash, and possibly break into my house looking for evidence I’ve got a couple million stashed in a numbered account somewhere. I mean, *they* don’t know that I pay my taxes. And the chance of a multi-million dollar payout certainly makes it worth their time to investigate me.

This law is dangerous. It encourages neighbor to spy on neighbor. It invites hackers to break into my computer and online accounts, looking for hidden money. It asks family members to inform on each other. It stinks of pre-WWII Nazi Germany and has no place in a third world dictatorship, let alone the United States.

You can contact your Congressperson here.