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IRS Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 08, 2019 22 Comments
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) reportedly violated federal tax law by jointly filing her tax returns in both 2014 and 2015 with a man to whom she was not legally married; indeed, at that time, she was legally married to another man.

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 22, 2019 11 Comments
Back in May 2018, attorney Michael Avenatti published what looked like bank records related to President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, who in turn demanded the court force Avenatti to reveal his source. Avenatti claimed that Cohen lacked evidence that he received or distributed any bank records. At the time, Cohen represented Stormy Daniels in her case against Trump. Well, now an IRS employee has been charged with providing Cohen's information to Avenatti.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 02, 2018 21 Comments
Readers are familiar with the IRS targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. But there has been another targeting story percolating through the court system that has received little attention, until now.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 24, 2017 34 Comments
By now, most people know the back story. In the run-up to the 2012 election, Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations were subjected to unnecessary scrutiny and even harassment by the IRS to whom they were applying for non-profit status.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 26, 2017 38 Comments
Two big items happened today concerning the IRS. No, the agency still exists and we have to pay taxes. However, the agency has apologized for targeting conservative groups due to their political beliefs during President Barack Obama's administration. Also, it's now official that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will leave in November as President Donald Trump announced a new leader.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 08, 2017 78 Comments
Lois Lerner was the IRS official at the center of the scandal over targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups. The evidence was overwhelming that Tea Party and conservative groups had applications for tax exempt status delayed or denied, while liberal groups did not, and that this targeting was deliberate. Documents and hard drives went missing, Lerner pleaded the 5th, and there were years of obfuscation and delay in producing documents and information. The House Oversight Committee produced this video in 2014 summarizing what had happened:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 30, 2017 19 Comments
The IRS seems to be in a constant state of administrative shambles.  Former IRS employees fired for falsifying documents, illegally accessing taxpayer information, and a range of other conduct, ethics, and legal issues are being rehired by the same agency that fired them.  This rehiring reportedly occurs despite flags and notes on the former-employee's personnel file. The IRS claims that it's too "cost prohibitive" to verify that the employees they hire had not already been fired by the agency. You can't make this stuff up.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 14, 2017 5 Comments
The House Ways and Means Committee has passed a bill that limits when the IRS can take action on taxpayer assets. From The Hill:
The bill concerns cases where taxpayers are suspected of “structuring” transactions under $10,000 to avoid bank-reporting requirements. Under the legislation, the IRS would only be able to seize funds in suspected structuring cases when the funds came from illegal sources or the transactions were structured in order to conceal other criminal activity. Additionally, the legislation would establish a process to review seizures.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 10, 2017 12 Comments
In March of 2015, more than twenty armed agents rolled up to Mii’s Bridal & Tuxedo in Garland, Texas. The store's owners, Tony and Somnuek Thangsongcharoen, were given two hours to cough up $10,000 to avoid seizure of their property for a tax bill of $31,422. When they were unable to provide the IRS with a check, agents proceeded with the seizure and auctioned off everything of value.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 25, 2017 23 Comments
It has been almost five years since news broke that officials at the IRS used the power of government to harass members of the Tea Party and other conservative groups. The media has largely ignored the scandal and so far, no one has gone to jail. Earlier this month, IRS officials claimed they couldn't testify because their lives were at risk. USA Today reported:
IRS officials say lives at risk in tea party bias case Details about tea party bias claims against the IRS could remain secret because current and former agency officials say their lives are in danger if they publicly testify about the case.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on April 17, 2017 30 Comments
Chris Matthews has invited liberals at the IRS to leak the audit status of President Trump's tax return. On this evening's Hardball, Matthews said: "we know there's no audit [of Trump.] Can't the IRS just make a statement, he's not under audit? Just make the announcement. By the way, that would be a good leak. Somebody at the IRS just leaking. I thought they were all liberals over there. Why doesn't somebody just leak it?" Pursuant to 26 US Code Sec. 7213, disclosing an individual's return information is "a felony punishable upon conviction by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 09, 2017 17 Comments
It is astonishing how much is being revealed about the "Deep State" since Donald Trump was inaugurated less than two months ago. This week, Wikileaks published almost 9,000 documents from the CIA about the agency’s own malware used to hack into anyone’s electronics make it look like the cyber-attack came from Russia. Now, after years of struggling for real justice from the Obama Administration that falsely claimed Tea Party groups were never targeted, citizen activists now have access to nearly 7,000 documents related to the illegal man-handling of their tax status applications by the Internal Revenue Service.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 15, 2016 12 Comments
The Senate Finance Committee has discovered that 27 IRS employees in fiscal 2015 spent over $1.4 million on travel expenses to use "high-end car services and luxury apartment and hotel stays." One member of the committee said the report hows that the agency has not done anything to reduce waste. Federal employees must spend like a "prudent person" while traveling. These 27 employees traveled only 125 business days and the bills averaged $52,000 a year:
The committee found more than half of the long-term travel time was spent in the Washington D.C., area. It found cases of five employees living in hotels, primarily in the capital, for months at a time without looking for lower-cost housing or having their per diem rates reduced as outlined in federal guidelines.
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