Curbelo's Carbon Tax Threatens 300% IRS Fines for "Any person who fails to comply"

On Monday congressman Carlos Curbelo will introduce an $800 billion tax increase — a carbon tax hike plan in the U.S. House of Representatives. The carbon tax will raise the price of gas and will hit low-income households especially hard. And consider yourself warned: The IRS will come knocking for a 300% penalty on “any person who fails to comply.”

Yes, you read that correctly: Three. Hundred. Percent.

Let’s go straight to the bill, so you can see for yourself. Sections 9901, 9902, 9903, and 9904 describe the carbon tax hike, and then Section 9907 reads as follows:

PENALTIES FOR NONPAYMENT

“Any person who fails to comply with the requirements of section 9901, 9902, 9903, or 9904 shall be liable for payment to the Secretary, without demand, of a penalty in the amount equal to 3 times the applicable amount specified by those sections for the same tax year as the year in which the person failed to comply with such requirements.”

An IRS Enrolled Agent interviewed for this article noted the unusually harsh — perhaps unprecedented — IRS penalty. “As an Enrolled Agent who has run his own tax prep firm for over a decade, I’ve never run into anything close to a 300 percent tax penalty. The biggest one I can think of is 50 percent, and most are far smaller than that,” said Ryan L. Ellis.

The Curbelo carbon tax hike bill imposes a massive tax on American employers, encourages the creation of state carbon taxes, creates a long list of products to be carbon-taxed and gives the EPA chief unfettered power to add to that list.

The Curbelo bill also creates a UN-style “National Climate Commission” which will be given the power to access data and documents from any federal government entity. Taxpayer-funded federal employees will be detailed to the Commission while continuing to receive their salary. The Commission will arrange for travel expenses, have the ability to hire “experts and consultants” and even have postal franking privileges.

What could possibly go wrong?