SOUTH DENNIS, Mass.

I BET YOU KNEW that the Internal Revenue Service was robbing you. You just didn’t know how much. Read on.

Are you a middle-class retiree living off money in an IRA? The IRA is supposed to give you a break by allowing you to put money away tax-free, allowing it to grow, and then taxing you when you withdraw it. Sounds good, doesn’t it? You’re getting robbed. You’re not benefiting from it as much as the government.

Last year I took my first mandatory withdrawal from my IRA. It was about $10,000. The covenant I made with the government was that I would then pay taxes on this $10,000. Fine. But I ended up paying taxes on $20,000!

Why? The previous year, $3,000 of my Social Security was taxable. But last year, the IRA withdrawal, added as regular income, increased my adjusted gross income (AGI) so that $13,000 of my Social Security was taxed.

In other words, I withdrew $10,000, but our tax code, trying to squeeze everything out of the middle class, taxed an additional $10,000 of my Social Security, for a total of $20,000. Except for the IRA withdrawal, there was nothing different from the year before. I was, in effect, double-taxed for my IRA withdrawal.

Don’t think there is not a group of congressmen (who make the laws) and a group of government tax people (who formulate and execute them) sitting around saying, “Hey, why wait to collect all the taxes on their IRAs? Let’s nail them and take all their money now!” That’s what they’re doing, and we’re sitting still for it. Actually, we’re doing more than sitting still: We re-elect the hooligans, allowing them to support their pork-barrel projects, and supporting people who don’t pay any taxes and for whom multi-generational welfare has become a way of life.

And that’s not the end of it. Your IRA capital gains are being taxed as regular income, not at the lower capital-gains tax rate. Also, your IRA dividends are also being taxed as regular income, not at the lower dividend tax rate. You are getting doubly and triply extorted. It’s a stick-up!

Cui bono? Who benefits? The government — represented by these same avaricious politicians who made the laws.

In a previous life, as a columnist for The Cape Cod Times, I railed against the Bush dividend tax cut. I pointed out that the rich, who owned oodles of dividend-paying stocks, would benefit enormously from it, while the great befuddled middle class, who had most of their investments in IRAs, would be gouged by having their accrued dividends taxed at the regular income rate. No one listened.

Even Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world, pointed out that under that change he would end up paying the same tax as his secretary. People, especially, the middle class, hear “Tax cut!” and they stand up and cheer without realizing they’re the fools who will be making up the revenue difference. It’s really easy for the government to con them. They want to be conned.

A Roth IRA can help overcome some of these inequities. With a Roth, you pay taxes for your contributions on the front end so that you don’t get hurt as much on your returns on the back end. That’s the smart thing to do if you’re in a position to contribute to an IRA. There are also some conditions that must be met. However, if you’re already near or in retirement and want to convert to a Roth, you have to pay a small fortune in taxes up front out of your regular IRA that you may never recoup.

I wish I were not a member of the middle class. Because if I weren’t:

• I would be rich.

• I would not be a part of a befuddled group that year after year, election after election, allows itself to be taxed into extinction.

I urge you all to read The Fair Tax Book, by Neal Boortz. Basically, the fair tax abolishes the IRS and taxes you not on what you earn, but on what you spend. It is a comprehensive and equitable plan, embraced by many financial experts, to revamp our disastrous tax system. The Web site for Americans for Fair Taxation is www.fairtax.org.

Only one presidential candidate out of the 20 or so originally in our three-ring circus mentioned and endorsed it. That was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The others, of either party, seem to be content to continue bleeding America’s middle class. That’s you!

Solon Economou, a frequent contributor, is an engineer and Cape Cod-based writer ( capecodder1@hotmail.com).