Tag: IRS

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

Assault on Political Speech, Deferred

It’s like jumping from ice floe to ice floe while being shot at. Great if you can reach the next slab of ice while the shooters pause to reload. But then what?

Having been caught targeting right-​leaning applicants for tax-​exempt status, the IRS decided to clear up the “ambiguity” in rules for tax-​exempt organizations that had “led” to this “confusion.” The solution, they decided, should be to make it impossible for a tax-​exempt organization that ever mentions political candidates or elections to avoid getting into trouble with the IRS.

No. What Americans needed post-​scandal is what we have needed all along: more restrictions on the government, not on our freedom to speak out.

Persons of all political stripes saw the danger in the Draconian new rules IRS was proposing, resulting in an unprecedented 150,000 public comments — mostly negative. So the IRS is backing down for now … but says it will try again.

Not everyone is happy about the reprieve.

“This delay is deeply disappointing and a real setback for democracy[!!] and faith in government[!!!],” says Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. “The only hope we have is when the IRS goes back, they don’t succumb to any form of political pressure and enact a very tough rule that will equally curtail liberal and conservative groups.”

“Only hope” for what? Equal-​opportunity repression?

It bodes ill that any major political figure could be so open about wishing to stomp on our freedom of speech.

The battle for our basic rights is far from over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption

The Colluders

Inadvertent? Un-​partisan? No direction from above?

Such were many of the early claims in response to the scandal over IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups applying for tax-​exempt status.

The characterization was not vindicated when Lois Lerner — who ran the agency’s division dealing with exempt organizations until she resigned in semi-​disgrace —a sserted her Fifth Amendment rights rather than tell us what she knows. Sundry revelations since the scandal broke have further exploded the claim that lowly functionaries acted independently of high officials.

Now Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer for True the Vote, which combats voter fraud, is being vindicated in charges of collusion between Lerner and congressional Democrats.From THE KELLY FILE

“[T]he only difference between what happened in Watergate when Richard Nixon asked the IRS to go after his political enemies was when Richard Nixon asked, they refused,” according to Mitchell. “When these Democratic politicians said, ‘Go do something about these conservative groups because they’re challenging us.…’ the IRS [did] their bidding to try and silence these groups.”

Mitchell appeared on The Kelly File to discuss recently released IRS email implying coordination between Democrat Elijah Cummings of the House Oversight Committee (of “nothing to see here” fame) and the IRS. After applying for tax-​exempt status, True the Vote received sets of nearly identical questions — on widely separate occasions — from both the IRS and Cummings. That’s not only collusion, it’s guileful sharing of taxpayer information that is supposed to remain confidential.

Disturbing, but not surprising.

This is Common Sense. This is Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

IRS No Friend of Friends of Abe

In the better-​late-​than-​never department, the Internal Revenue Service has granted tax-​exempt status to Friends of Abe. Variety magazine calls the group “Hollywood’s largest fellowship of conservative and right-​of-​center independents” in an industry known for tilting 320 degrees or so to the left.

The status comes three years after the Friends filed its application. But the belated approval does not mean that IRS’s politically motivated targeting has stopped and that all legitimate applications filed by conservative groups are now being granted with only standard quotients of bureaucratic lethargy.

The American Center for Law and Justice — representing 41 plaintiffs who say IRS violated their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly — attests that 13 of them have still not received tax-​exempt status, with the oldest application having gathered dust since 2009. Meanwhile, the IRS officer until recently overseeing these applications, Lois Lerner, continues to plead the Fifth when asked to testify about the agency’s conduct.

We may never fully know what happened and is still happening here, given the stonewalling being done not only by Lerner but others in IRS and elsewhere in the government (like the Justice Department). But it is clear that IRS has abetted the freedom of speech and assembly of ideologically favored groups at the expense of others, and to the benefit of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign; and that IRS wants even more power to thus discriminate. The policies being covered up are wrong, dangerous … and ongoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability

Words Without Meaning

“I promise you that we hold everybody up and down the line accountable,” President Barack Obama told Bill O’Reilly of Fox News during last Sunday’s Super Bowl interview.

When studies show one in 20 food stamp transactions to be fraudulent; when the GAO finds $120 million a year spent paying federal workers who are deceased; when, well, “name your own favorite absurdly wasteful program here,” how does the word “accountable” pass through the president’s lips without a respondent clap of thunder followed by the sizzle and pop of a lightning bolt?

Yet, Obama claims — no, promises! — that this omnipresent accountability reaches absolutely “everybody” in the federal government.

President O was responding specifically to O’Reilly’s charge that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the official responsible for the disastrous Obamacare rollout, has faced no consequences.

She’s not alone. Only by replacing the word “everybody” with the phrase “virtually no one” would Mr. Obama’s statement be made accurate.

Yesterday, I detailed several different ways the IRS has violated people’s most important and basic political rights — from blocking citizens trying to form non-​profit groups for communicating their ideas to trashing privacy rights by handing personal tax information to one’s political opponents to harassing donors to “the other” candidate with multiple unwarranted audits. No one in any of these scandals has been disciplined, let go or in any meaningful way held accountable.

“Political language is designed,” as George Orwell warned, “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Up and down the line.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability

Protecting the Guilty at IRS

Should a spurious inalienable right to Employee Confidentiality protect IRS personnel from being held accountable when they commit crimes?

In 2010, Christine O’Donnell, then running for U.S. Senate, had to fend off false accusations about tax liabilities on property she no longer owned — after her tax returns had been released to political opponents. No one broke into her home and stole a copy of the returns. Some IRS guy had divulged them.

Other citizens too, as we’ve noted, have been targeted by IRS and other agencies for ruffling the feathers of the powers that be.

Congressional committees looking into the Internal Revenue Service’s diverse assaults on persons with inconvenient political views have tossed O’Donnell’s case onto their slush pile. But IRS is not cooperating with these investigations. IRS says that openly naming perpetrators would violate Employee Confidentiality. (Which apparently bears a family resemblance to Diplomatic Immunity.)

This is par. A few IRS officers have been transferred or even resigned following revelations about how IRS harassed conservative applicants for tax-​exempt status. But the FBI has dropped its non-​investigation of evil deeds with respect to which a perpetrator like Lois Lerner feels she must plead the Fifth and depart the scene with only her freedom and her $50,000 pension. Others also see nothing to see.

If our laws allow IRS to stonewall to protect the guilty, they should be changed. Such governmental targeting of us should be both illegal and punishable. Do you agree?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Photograph courtesy of scismgenie, some rights reserved.

Categories
insider corruption

IRS Clarifies Targeting: Yes

The Internal Revenue Service has proposed new regulations to restrict the eligibility of nonprofit organizations applying for tax-​exempt status.

Per the proposal, nonprofits tainted by certain kinds of political activity will be ineligible, since those kinds ipso facto don’t do anybody any good. Forget that “social welfare” and “political” issues might overlap.

Association with a candidate or political party, communicating with or supporting or even mentioning the name of a candidate for office too close to a general election, even voter registration drives would be disqualifying.

Let’s say a nonprofit bookstore promotes a select set of books online. The author of several of those volumes runs for office. Would the store’s tax-​exempt status now be in jeopardy unless it scrubbed reviews of his books? Well, according to the IRS’s own explanation, “content previously posted by an organization on its Web site that clearly identifies a candidate and remains on the Web site during the specified pre-​election period would be treated as candidate-​related political activity.”

Any chance that the strict new rules will be varyingly interpreted and selectively enforced?

Well, yeah, if the IRS’s decades-​long track record, especially the recent targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups applying for tax-​exempt status, is any indication.

The agency is soliciting your comments on the proposed new tourniquet on political speech (here). The deadline is February 27. Proceed with pith if not vinegar.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

IRS Returns Money It Stole

A year after the IRS seized their bank account, Terry Dehko and his daughter have gotten their money back, thanks to a lawsuit they undertook with the help of the valiant Institute for Justice.

The IRS had looked at how the Dehkoses deposited revenues from their Fraser, Michigan store and decided, without further inquiry, that they were illegally “structuring” the deposits so that their bank would not have to submit currency transaction reports.

The reporting threshold is $10,000; most of the Dehkoses’ deposits were indeed less than $10,000. However, $10,000 is also the maximum loss that their insurance policy would cover in the event of theft! How hard would it have been to simply ask the reason for the deposit pattern?

Nor did the folks at the IRS ever show evidence of tax evasion or other illegality.

The Dehkoses have their money back. But they’ve lost a year. And lost any profits they might have earned by investing those unavailable funds, as well as any profits they might have earned by spending the time on their business that they instead spent trying to get their money back. Of course, the IRS will not be required to compensate the Dehkos for either psychic pain or lost opportunities.

There’s plenty more wrong with the agency’s conduct than is suggested by this case. At the least, though, it should be illegal to seize bank balances absent any showing of wrongdoing. And IRS officers who perpetrate such arbitrary seizures should be punished.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

The Tax Agency and the Tortoise

We are indebted to a publisher of tax information called Tax Analysts for its efforts to make the Internal Revenue Service slightly more accountable.

The IRS finds itself beleaguered, sort of, by scandal — the fallout from their practice of impeding applications for tax-​exempt status of Tea Party and other “patriot” and “constitutionalist” groups. But the agency doesn’t always cooperate with investigations of its conduct.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Tax Analysts has sued the IRS to obtain all materials used since 2009 to train Cincinnati personnel in the art of handling applications for tax-​exempt status.

Folks at the IRS had at first “agreed” to comply with the FOIA request for these instructions ─ which will shed light on what, exactly, employees have been told at various times about how to deal with applicants of various ideological hue. But the agency kept dithering, first telling Tax Analysts that it would supply the stuff pronto, then saying it needed more time; then saying the same when the next-​named comply-​by date arrived; etc., ad infinitum.

Like the ever-​slowing competitor to Zeno’s tortoise, the IRS found it impossible to ever cross the finish line or actually supply any documents.

Yet these guys slap us with penalties if we’re late with the taxes.…

Well, Tax Analysts has seen the IRS’s delaying tactics before. So now the matter is in court. Sooner or later we shall learn whether the agency’s own written instructions counsel ideological discrimination, or these instructions are untainted by such but have been flouted by IRS officers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

IRS’s Targeting Was Targeting

The more we learn about the latest IRS scandal, the harder it is to evade what it is all about: the systematic thwarting— for years on end — of legitimate applications for tax-​exempt status submitted by Tea Party and other conservative groups.

It’s getting pretty thick and deep in the redoubts of those still claiming that only a few rogue, overwhelmed IRS clerks fashioned the policy “accidentally.”

Far from being limited to the inadvertent machinations of a few harried, bungle-​prone IRS clerks huddling furtively in airless, lightless, low-​ceilinged Cincinnati basement rooms, the scheme to put the Tea Party applications on the glue-​laced slow track has its origin in the nation’s capital. We’re now learning that the IRS chief counsel himself is implicated in the determination to be dilatory.

That’s a guy named William Wilkins. Appointed by the President.

Some also still claim that left-​leaning non-​profits were as much beleaguered by unwarranted IRS delays as right-​leaning non-​profits. The facts don’t support this notion. Some “progressive” and “Occupier” groups seem to have undergone slow review, but not the same pattern of excessive inquiry and drill-​down information mining that has emerged for conservative groups.

Moreover, an IRS abusing our civil liberties equally isn’t the answer.

As Carol Liebau noted last week, the latest revelations confirm that “there was, in fact, a dedicated ‘Tea Party Coordinator’ at the IRS, a position that has no analogue on the left.…” IRS targeting does not equal standard scrutiny. “The term refers to concerted efforts to harass law-​abiding Americans (seeking tax-​exempt status) based on their (right-​leaning) viewpoint alone.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption national politics & policies too much government

S.O.P. at the IRS

Remember the IRS scandal? I mean the one about how the Internal Revenue Service has been monkey-​wrenching the applications for tax-​exempt status submitted by politically non-​leftward organizations (Tax Prof Blog has the latest).

But politically motivated clogging of an application process is just one way that the IRS abuses us. Victims of its normal forms of abuse have also been coming forward lately, seeing that they now have at least a temporarily receptive audience.

One such is Jeffrey Black, former employee of the Federal Air Marshal Service, who has long tried to fix the problems he sees with the Air Marshals. It seems that not every colleague appreciates it.Jeffrey Black

After retiring in 2010, Black appeared in a documentary (“Please Remove Your Shoes”) about the pseudo-​security measures we have to endure at the airport. Why not? He couldn’t be fired any more, right? But the day the documentary premiered — “almost to the hour” — the IRS notified him that he was being audited. It also slapped a lien on his home.

In the end, their investigation turned up $480 that Black owed the IRS, which he paid; and $8,300 that the IRS owed Black, which IRS didn’t pay.

“Being a veteran of extensive retaliation … I am not surprised about this,” he told CNN. “It is basically the only way they can still … retaliate against me after I retired.”

The IRS denies that audits are ever politically motivated.

They deny many things.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.