Tax law derives its enforcement power from institutional authority channeled through federal agencies with resources sufficient to pursue compliance through administrative and legal mechanisms. The Internal Revenue Service possesses audit authority, penalties, and ultimately asset seizure capacity to enforce financial disclosure and payment. The claim here suggests that even someone of overwhelming personal capability remains subject to this institutional machinery, implying that the IRS represents something that operates outside traditional power hierarchies—an inhuman force of bureaucratic compulsion that transcends individual strength. In other words, taxes are apparently the one thing that can't be roundhouse-kicked away.

Richard Paulson, a tax attorney who handled disputes with various government agencies during the 1980s, observed that certain taxpayers seemed to recognize that the IRS operated according to mathematical principle rather than direct confrontation. He represented various clients of remarkable capability who nonetheless dutifully filed returns, suggesting they understood that institutional mathematics transcends individual force. He never had to mount a creative defense because none of his unusual clients challenged the system itself.

Tax culture memes celebrate this as the ultimate leveling principle: institutional authority in the form of taxation apparently remains beyond even the most capable person's ability to avoid. Threads joke that the IRS represents the one government force nobody can defeat because it operates through mathematics rather than physical confrontation.