This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 15, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The IRS is now easing up on its plan to go after decades-old benefit overpayments from people who may be dead by seizing the tax refunds

of their adult children.

It goes against everything we know about how statutes of limitations are supposed to work.

The strange power was granted in a recent farm bill.

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute,

we spoke just before the IRS pared down its plans.

The IRS, much to the surprise of many, many taxpayers, is attaching people's refunds.

It is sending them a smaller check or no check at all on the grounds that the government

is owed that money, not necessarily by the taxpayer himself or herself, but because it's a so-called

overpayment, which may have been an overpayment to their parents.

Their parents who may be dead.

Yes, their parents who often are dead.

Now, the government is taking the position and it can point to a recently enacted provision in federal

legislation that there is no longer any statute of limitations whatsoever on their ability to claw back so-called overpayments and

overpayments are money that was paid out under certain programs the one that's

most relevant for the controversy is Social Security survivorship

things like that in which checks were sent out and perhaps they found

afterward that the person had stopped being eligible or for whatever reason the check

should have been smaller or shouldn't have been sent and their position is that

they can not only proceed against the person they sent the check to but also to any children even if completely

...