I suppose it’s possible that all sorts of Americans in different circumstances and different walks of life might have different ways of “celebrating” April 15th — Tax Day — in addition to a dramatic wipe of the brow and a declaration that it’s Miller Time®. On Capitol Hill, where it probably should not be expected that they do anything the way normal Americans do, the House Small Business Committee celebrated Tax Day by holding a hearing to examine the impact of the tax code on small businesses. At least, that is what the hearing was supposed to be about. As matters evolved, this hearing devolved into still more Republican griping about the health care reform legislation that was signed into law earlier this year by President Obama. There was only one witness for this hearing: Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Schulman occupied the hot seat.

Commissioner Schulman no doubt expected to be talking about issues such as IRS enforcement efforts and the tax gap, tax simplification and the use to which the IRS has put recently acquired staff. And he did do some of that but spent a lot more time fielding questions about the various impacts of “Obamacare” on small businesses and on taxpayers in general. Schulman, for his part, turned things around neatly by using the incident from this past February of a disgruntled taxpayer flying an airplane into an IRS facility, killing one IRS employee, to complain about what he called the “irresponsible demonizing of the IRS and its employees.” More specifically, he noted that the health care reform bill gave the IRS no role in the health care decisions of doctors and patients, that the IRS was specifically prohibited from imposing liens and other forms or property seizure for failure to acquire health insurance, and that he had no immediate plans to hire tens of thousands of new agents.

From the point of view of most microbusinesses, most of what was brought up during this hearing was irrelevant. The exceptions — tax simplification, the proposed standard home office deduction, increased taxpayer education and outreach — did not get anywhere near as much attention as their potential impacts warranted. It was perhaps one of the most political hearings this writer has ever witnessed before this Committee and, frankly, it wasn’t pretty.