GAO Report: IRS may be choosing you for audit based on your political beliefs...

Somewhere, Lois Lerner is smiling...

Via ATR:

Serious internal control flaws mean the IRS may still be unfairly selecting Americans for an audit “based on an organization’s religious, educational, political, or other views,” according to a pair of reports released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) today.
As GAO notes, certain deficiencies increase the risk of unfair audit selection based on a taxpayers First Amendment rights. As the report finds:

“The control deficiencies increase the risk of selecting organizations for audit in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization’s religious, educational, political, or other views.”

Outrage: IRS is enabling illegal immigrants identity theft...

three monkeys via photopin (license)

 The criminals at the IRS are enabling illegal immigrant criminals. 

Risking their jobs to come forward, the whistleblowers do not want to show their identity. But they do want to show how the IRS is a knowing accomplice to millions of cases of identity theft while keeping victims in the dark.
A five-month Eyewitness News investigation shows their concerns are well-documented, and the IRS has been warned about the problem for years. Within a massive federal agency that claims to be taking identity theft seriously, the reality – in many cases – is very different.
"We are not supposed to do anything." said a whistleblower. "We are not allowed to say anything."
Findings of the 13 Investigates report include:

• The IRS accepts millions of tax returns – and issues tax refunds – even when taxpayer documents show clear warning signs of identity theft
• Confidential IRS policies instruct IRS employees not to tell taxpayers when someone else uses their social security number to earn income
• The IRS allows illegal immigrants to "borrow" social security numbers that do not legally belong to them
• The IRS is discontinuing a program to notify taxpayers when their social security number is used by someone else to gain employment

Please read it all...

Ben Carson demands IRS revoke CAIR's tax exempt status...

CAIR engaged in politics by demanding Ben Carson withdraw. Don't expect much from Obama's politicized IRS. Now, If this were a tea Party group and the demand came from Bernie Sanders...

Via BPR:

Presidential contender Ben Carson‘s conflict with CAIR is getting hotter since Carson’s headline-making interview about a potential Muslim president.
The retired neurosurgeon on Saturday demanded that the IRS crack down on the Council on American-Islamic Relations for violating regulations that restrict the political involvement by groups that claim non-profit status.
The IRS has shown no problem with attacking conservative groups on much flimsier grounds during the Obama era.
It’s largely faded from the headlines, but the IRS targeting of conservative groups is one of the many “phony scandals” that have dogged the Obama administration. In an email on Saturday, Carson demanded that the IRS treat CAIR the way it treated conservative groups — with much less reason.
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a public press conference demanding that I withdraw from the presidential race,” Carson observed in an email announcing a petition to remove CAIR’s tax-exempt status, according to The Hill.
“Here’s the catch – CAIR is a tax-exempt nonprofit, and the IRS rules explicitly prohibit such groups from intervening in political campaigns on behalf of – or in opposition to – a candidate,” the email continues.
Keep on reading…

Lois Lerner emails: Conservatives are "crazies" and "a--holes"

No bias or even a smidgen of corruption here...

A trove of IRS emails show top official Lois Lerner had a deep commitment to the Democratic Party and a significant dislike for the new conservative grassroots groups that formed under the Tea Party banner and sought tax-exempt status from the agency.

"Crazies" and "a--holes," were the blunt terms Lerner used to describe conservatives, who, with a Supreme Court decision striking down the campaign finance reform law, were bringing about "an end to America," she wrote.
The emails are included in a bipartisan report issued Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, which cited "gross mismanagement" and also "personal politics" as the root cause of the IRS mishandling of tax-exempt applications from Tea Party organizations.

Finally: Federal Judge threatens to hold IRS Commissioner in contempt for failing to produce Lerner emails...

Go get'em judge. 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.
During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.”  He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.”  Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt.  Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”
After the hearing, Judge Sullivan issued the following “minute order”:

At the July 29, 2015 status hearing, the Government agreed that the Court’s July 1, 2015 oral order from the bench was clear and enforceable.  Nonetheless, the Government reasoned it inappropriate to file a motion for reconsideration until a written order was issued.  As expressed at the hearing, the Government’s reasoning is nonsensical.  Officers of the Court who fail to comply with Court orders will be held in contempt.  Also, in the event of non-compliance with future Court orders, the Commissioner of the IRS and others shall be directed to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt of Court.  The Court’s July 1, 2015 ruling from the bench stands: (1) the Government shall produce relevant documents every Monday; (2) the Government’s document production shall be accompanied by a status report that indicates (a) whether TIGTA has turned over any new documents to the IRS, (b) if so, the number of documents, and (c) a timeframe for the IRSs production of those documents. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on July 29, 2015.

Confirmed: IRS targeted donors to Tea Party 501(c)(4) organizations for audits...

Time to lock some people up and do away with the IRS.

Via Judicial Watch:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits.
The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS. The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)).
Keep on reading…

IRS erased Lois Lerner backup tapes, shredded her hard drive...

Why isn't someone in jail?

WASHINGTON – The lead government watchdog for the IRS revealed Thursday that computer evidence was erased during the investigation into the agency’s targeting scandal, months after the IRS was told to preserve documents.
J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that IRS employees erased computer backup tapes shortly after officials discovered thousands of emails related to the tax agency’s Tea Party scandal had been lost.
As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were “magnetically erased” around March 4, 2014.
Keep reading…

1,600 IRS employees willfully evaded taxes; most were not fired...

The penalty was waived by the IRS commissioner? Seriously?

Via Fox News:

Nearly 1,600 IRS workers were found to have willfully evaded taxes over a 10-year period, including some who were responsible for enforcing the nation’s tax laws, a government watchdog said Wednesday.
It’s a small percentage of the tax agency’s employees — about 160 workers a year out of a workforce of 85,000.
A new report by the agency’s inspector general said most were not fired, even though a 1998 law calls for terminations when IRS workers willfully don’t pay their taxes. The penalty must be waived by the IRS commissioner.
Keep on reading…

IRS has found thousands of undisclosed Lois Lerner emails...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen hardest hit.

Via The Hill:

An inspector general investigating the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups has found thousands of IRS, the agency official at the center of that controversy, according to committees involved in the probe.
Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) said it found roughly 6,400 emails either to or from Lerner from between 2004 and 2013 that it didn’t think the IRS had turned over to lawmakers, the congressional committees said. The committees have yet to examine the emails, aides on Capitol Hill said.
The IRS said last year that Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving it unable to reproduce an untold number of her emails over the prior two years.
Of the emails the inspector general found, around 650 were from 2010 and 2011, while most were from 2012. The inspector general found about 35,000 emails in all as it sought to recover emails from recycled back-up tapes.
Keep reading…

Outrage: IRS cut customer service budget while re-instating bonuses...

Based on targeting people based on their political beliefs and generally poor customer service, why do IRS employees deserve a bonus? They are lucky we haven't fired them in mass. 

Via TWS:

In addition to the $11 billion appropriated by Congress, the IRS takes in more than $400 million in user fees and may allocate that money as it sees fit. In 2014, the IRS allocated $183 million in user fees to its customer service budget, but allocated just $49 million in 2015--a 76 percent cut.
Commissioner Koskinen will appear before the House Ways and Means Committee this morning, one week after the federal tax filing deadline, and he can expect to be asked why the IRS cut its own customer service budget and continues to spend money on other questionable activities.
The report notes that Koskinen reinstated bonuses weeks after his appointment, has allowed IRS employees to spend roughly 500,000 work hours on union activities, and failed to collect delinquent taxes owed by federal employees. The tax agency has also been strained by Obamacare. According to the report, the IRS has spent "over $1.2 billion on the President’s health care law to date, with a planned expenditure this year of an additional $500 million. More here...

Report: Sens. McCain and Levin urged IRS to target Tea Party

Is anyone shocked?

Via Examiner:

Government documents obtained by a top "Inside the Beltway" watchdog group and released on Thursday reveal that Internal Revenue Service's Lois Lerner was strongly urged by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, her assistance in attacking certain non-profit political groups. The organizations they selected for targeting by Lerner were part of the Tea Party and conservative movements.

Courtesy of US Senate Photo Gallery

The group that investigates and exposes government corruption, Judicial Watch, released newly acquired IRS documents, including an email from Ms. Lerner in February 2012 requesting she “put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls of revealing too much information to Congress."
One of the released documents is a Lerner email from 2013 that she was willing to 'take a bullet" for Obama and his White House for the IRS scandal and that she understood why the targeting of Tea Party organizations and other conservative groups may raise questions regarding what did President Obama know and when did he know it. Obama had told the press that he first read about the IRS targeting of conservatives in the newspaper.
According to a Judicial Watch officials, "A May 1, 2013, email exchange between Lois Lerner and other top IRS staffers revealed that 11 days prior to Lerner’s admission that the IRS had “inappropriately” targeted conservative groups, she met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the 'worst decisions I have ever seen.'" Read it all here...

IRS ethics Update: IRS ethics officer disbarred for ethics violation...

The IRS is rotten to the core. We need to disband it and go to a national sales tax or flat tax.

Via The Washington Times:

The lawyer, Takisha Brown, reportedly had bragged that she would never be punished because her boss would protect her, but an IRS spokesman said Wednesday that she was no longer an employee at the agency.

“Our records indicate that this employee no longer works for the IRS,” spokesman Matthew Leas said, though he wouldn’t comment further on the case, which became another black eye for the embattled tax agency when The Washington Times first reported on it last year.

Ms. Brown had her licenses suspended and then was disbarred after misusing money she won for a client in an automobile accident case. Under terms of the deal, Ms. Brown was to use part of the settlement to pay the victim’s medical bills, but the lawyer withdrew the money herself and ignored repeated requests from the client’s physicians to make good on the bills, the appeals court said.

Lois Lerner can still take a look at your tax returns?

It's time to disband the IRS and go to a national sales tax or flat tax.

Via Forbes:

Could Lois Lerner still take a look at your tax returns on IRS computers? It sounds preposterous, but a new watchdog report says former IRS employees still have access to IRS computer systems long after they have no official business with the information. The report is by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. The GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. In the case of IRS security, the report says not well.
This report cites significant deficiencies in the security of IRS financial reporting systems. Millions of Americans who are legally required to file taxes are fearful about fraud. The report says the IRS needs to continue improving controls over financial and taxpayer data. In the case of former IRS workers with continuing access to IRS data systems, they need to be cut off. Keep on reading...

Flashback: Rep. Chaffetz (R) Digs IRS Commish Koskinen DEEP on Missing Emails

Now that the Inspector General's office has recovered 30,000 additional Lerner emails, why isn't IRS Commissioner Koskinen being held in contempt of Congress?

IRS official Lois Lerner begged her supervisor not to visit the Cincinnati office in run-up to 2012 election...

What was she hiding?

Via Townhall:

New emails obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit show former IRS official Lois Lerner begged her supervisor not to visit the Cincinnati office or ask specific questions related to Congressional inquiries into whether the agency was improperly targeting conservative groups just ahead of the 2012 presidential election. As a reminder, it wasn’t until May 2013 when Lerner admitted inappropriate targeting had occurred and plead the Fifth in front of the House Oversight Committee.
“Please don’t ask them about closures, pipelines, wait time for full development cases, or the c4 application letter … can we put this off please?” Lerner sent on April 4, 2012 to her then supervisor Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division Deputy Director Joseph H. Grant shortly after he announced a planned visit to the Cincinnati office.
Keep on reading…

IRS issues 21 pages of Obamacare instructions; calls tax penalty “shared responsibility payment”

Bullsh*t. SCOTUS only declared Obamacare constitutional based on the penalty being a tax. 

Via Washington Examiner:

The complicated process of signing up for Obamacare is now being matched by IRS instructions to help Americans figure out how much in healthcare taxes they owe Uncle Sam.
The agency has issued 21 pages of instructions, complete with links to at least three long forms and nine tip sheets.
It is geared to those who have Obamacare or who owe a fine, dubbed “shared responsibility payment,” for refusing to get health insurance. The IRS warned that everybody must have health insurance or pay the tax.
Keep on reading…

Christine O’Donnell mistakenly targeted by IRS for a second time...

Let me guess. This isn't a random accident. 

Via Washington Times:

Adding to the long-running saga of IRS dealings with conservatives, former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell says the tax agency punished her mistakenly for the second time in five years by imposing an erroneous levy on her bank accounts.
Ms. O’Donnell told The Washington Times that she discovered the levy when she couldn’t access her checking account as she was preparing to visit relatives over Thanksgiving.
“The day before I was heading out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend, my bank told me the IRS had frozen my accounts. They didn’t give me a reason why, just a phone number to call,” Ms. O’Donnell said in an interview this week.
Keep reading…

American voters really want Congress to keep investigating IRS targeting of Tea Party...

Kumbaya! Dem (60%) & GOP (78%) want Congress to keep investigating IRS targeting of #tea party #FoxNews #poll http://t.co/c7YEP0Wz28
— Fox News Poll (@foxnewspoll) December 11, 2014

IRS illegally gave up to 2500 taxpayer documents to White House?

Not a smidgen of corruption...

Via Newsmax:

The IRS improperly turned over thousands of confidential tax documents to the White House for review, according to information obtained from a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Treasury Department’s inspector general by the legal advocacy firm Cause of Action, exposing a pipeline of communication between the two, the Daily Caller reports.
“[T]he Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed Cause of Action that there exist nearly 2,500 potentially responsive documents relating to investigations of improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House,” Cause of Action noted, according to the Daily Caller.
Such documentation, including the exchange of confidential information between White House policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew and former IRS official Lois Lerner, came to light after it was revealed that the the IRS had likely targeted conservative groups for review, including one that had sought in a 2012 lawsuit to overturn Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, the Daily Caller noted.
The Justice Department has asked for a longer window under which to review the newly found documents before releasing them publicly, the Daily Caller said.
The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, in his “Secrets” column, called news of the leaked documents a “shocking revelation.”
Keep reading…

Hundreds of thousands of prisoners are getting phony tax returns...

Flat tax anyone?

Via Fox News:

Hundreds of thousands of prisoners are filing phony tax refund claims and the IRS is not doing enough to quash the problem, according to a watchdog report.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) said in its report Tuesday that refund fraud associated with prisoner Social Security numbers is a “significant problem” for the tax agency that is only getting worse over time.
According to the report, more than 137,000 phony tax returns were filed in 2012 using a prisoner’s Social Security number to the tune of $1 billion. While many of the fake refunds were flagged and prevented by the agency, the IRS issued $70 million in bogus refunds.
This was a significant increase from 2007, when more than 37,000 fake tax returns were filed for amounts equaling $166 million.
“Tax refund fraud associated with prisoners remains a significant problem for tax administration,” the report said.
Keep on reading…