The Department of Internal Resentment

I never expected a warm reception and rarely did I receive one. And whose doors did I knock on? The carpet installer, the day-care center operator, the Wal-Mart clerk, the carpenter, the print shop owner. The majority of the taxes I collected were from the small-business owner with fewer than 20 employees.

I long ago lost count of how many weed-choked fields I have trudged across to inspect some broken-down piece of farm equipment; how many musty warehouses, dilapidated mobile homes, cluttered shops and offices reeking of sweat and that peculiar odor of human desperation I have sat in; the number of ill-educated tradesmen, struggling entrepreneurs and desperate homemakers I have interrogated, demanding the impossible and promising the full fury of my federal power when my demands could not be met.

It is no secret that the nation's tax code favors the wealthy and protects big business. (An astounding 63 percent of United States corporations paid no federal income tax at all in 2000.) The individuals and businesses I encountered during my career did not have an army of tax lawyers, certified public accountants and lobbyists to guide and protect them. Most netted less than $30,000 per year. Most operated out of rundown store fronts in tired strip malls. Most were honest people who knew my arrival was the death knell of their American dream.

It should come as no surprise: the I.R.S. goes where the money's owed, and the money is owed by the little guy. When the service was reorganized in the late 1990's, it moved collection personnel to the small business/self-employed division; the other compliance division, which handles medium and large businesses, has no collection employees at all. Squeezed between a complex tax code that favors big business and an agency that marshals the entirety of its resources against him, the little guy doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't have the money to pay or to find a way out of paying.

Congress has not been completely deaf to the cries of the multitudes that the I.R.S., inebriated from years of imbibing absolute power, had a drinking problem. The reforms were intended, in part, to transform the ultimate bureaucratic bully into a convivial playmate. Inside the service, however, the bully culture endures. The truth is that most I.R.S. employees fear their employer more than the average taxpayer does. Most middle- and upper-level managers rose to power long before 1998, men and women (but mostly men) who learned as front-line employees the spoils of civil service (promotions and awards) come in direct proportion to the amount of power they exerted over taxpayers, invariably in the form of confiscation. As my on-the-job trainer informed me early in my career, if I wanted to advance my career in the I.R.S., I had to seize assets. And it didn't matter what I seized — the I.R.S. could always make equity.

Thus those who wield true power within the I.R.S. — the elite who determine policy, organization and procedure — perpetuate the culture of fear and intimidation, for it is the only way of life they have ever known. Fear and intimidation got them where they are — why should they change? Congress can rewrite the laws, but it can't change human nature or the nature of power. The result is some of the worst collection statistics in the agency's history and a decimated, demoralized rank-and-file squeezed between the demands of the bullies above and the rights of its "clients" below.

Commissioner Mark W. Everson has promised the I.R.S. will get back into the enforcement business. This is both heartening and frightening. Confidence in our tax system relies on the public's belief that the tax laws are administered fairly — that nobody escapes the wrath of the taxman. But as long as Congress passes laws that favor big business and the richest among us, as long as money buys protection and influence, there will never be true reform.

Only the little people pay taxes, Leona Helmsley once said. It's true: our government makes sure of it.

Richard Yancey is the author of "Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the I.R.S."