More About that “IRS Thing”
It seems that those questionable IRS activities that Doc Bailey wrote about the other day appear to be a little broader than just a targeting of Conservative advocacy groups for auditing. The Washington Post reports that a somewhat broader group of organizations was apparently targeted for “special attention” by our “esteemed” Tax Lords. What other groups, you might ask? Well, I’ll let the Post tell you:
The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.
But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report, which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be released.
It also seems that Jewish groups may have been included in those singled out for additional scrutiny by the IRS. According to the Jewish Press,
. . . in 2010, the passionately pro-Israel organization Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming it had been told by an IRS agent that because the organization was “connected to Israel,” its application for tax-exempt status would receive additional scrutiny. This admission was made in response to a query about the lengthy reveiw (sic) of Z STREET’s tax exempt status application.
In addition, the IRS agent told a Z STREET representative that the applications of some of those Israel-related organizations have been assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”
Yeah, I’d guess someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do here. And I kinda wonder who else might be on that “enemies list” at the IRS – and who gave it to them.
Oh, and that “bastion of conservative thought” Joe Klein seems kinda pissed about the IRS targeting conservative groups, too. I wonder if he’s going to go totally bonzo when he sees these new revelations.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Politics
Easy solution, abolish the IRS and all the insane tax codes no one understamds(even them). Instead of giving them more power as some have suggested lately, they need to have their power stripped away.
The local news station (WGN) this morning reported that it was all the fault of three low-level (unnamed) IRS workers in Ohio.
I’ll believe it when I see the names of those people. Then I’ll ask more questions.
Exactly. You don’t want the IRS picking who gets tax-exempt status and who doesn’t? Get rid of them and enact the FairTax. Only reason politicians don’t like it is it takes away their power.
While the current administration might try to toss a low-level functionary under the bus much like the state of Ohio kinda/sorta did with Helen Jones-Kelley after she illegally authorized the “dirt” be divulged on Joe Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” the truth, were it to be revealed, would more than likely show that people in the administration, if not the White House itself, knew of and authorized these action.
IOW, nice try, Barruh, but it ain’t gonna fly. The thin veneer of civility has been stripped from your administration and it’s being exposed for the hacks and petty tyrants they are.
Instead of “hope and change” the Obama’s true agenda is, “Know your place, shut your face!”
Better yet, boys and girls, imagine the hue and cry in the MSM this morning had this been 2005, and that the Bush administration were siccing the IRS on the Daily Kos, Huffpo, Code Pink, Center for American Progress, the ACLU, et al…
First we have Benghazi, then these IRS revelations, and
now the families of seal team 6 saying there’s is a cover-up.
And that the Admin. put targets on there sons backs.
I would say the admin. is not having a good week.
#6 Bruce
You forgot F&F, which has been unsuccessfully hushed up, but still hasn’t gone away to us TEA Party & Patriot types.
@Bruce, can you post a link to the reference about SEAL Team 6?
Thanks.
Abuse of power? Well, duh!!
Whoever did this clearly succeeded. They redirected the energies of each of these groups from constructive activity to defensive activity thus reducing their effectiveness.
Basic community organizer stuff. No need to give anyone any specific orders. They all know exactly what to do.
Here’s a little something to get you started, PH: http://press.org/events/navy-seal-team-vi-families
docstew: you do realize that the so-called “fair tax” is still a progressive taxation scheme, right? It just has fewer rates and brackets.
If you want a truly equitable tax, try either a no-exceptions sales or flat income tax. Those are the only two that treat everyone exactly the same.
Morning Joe on MSNBC has been talking Benghazi & IRS controversy non stop. Stuff like incompetence, cover-up, and liar being tossed around. Just about the whole crew ( well, maybe not Carl Bernstein) was piling on the Emperor and Jay Carney. Keep peeling the onion…what next?
Jeez, even The New Yorker taking jabs at the administration.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0
Ok, @ Ex-PH2 I have this link from fox news.
http://nation.foxnews.com/white-house/2013/05/10/parents-slain-navy-seal-obama-admin-put-target-our-sons-back
I also would say I do no one of the families of seal team 6
and the father is a ret. Master Guns, and they to think
there a cover-up. I will not give out there name for obvious
reasons
With all “due respect” to the WGN reporters, Ex-PH2: low level employees my ass. Not when the concept was presented to the head of the IRS’s Tax Exempt division.
“Low-level employees” don’t make such pitches to agency-level leadership without their boss’s approval and support. “It just don’t work that way.”
Hondo–I’m guessing PH2 was being a bit facetious, re: look at my “Joe the Plumber” comment, which was in fact conducted by three supposedly “low level” state of Ohio employees.
But there are enough people still out there who have drank enough of the Kool-Aid that they’ll fall on the sword to protect Obumbles and what they still foolishly think he’ll deliver to them, never realizing their savior is a leper messiah.
People, they explained this. It was a computer program that selected these groups for audits. Don’t you know computers reprogram themselves all the time all by themselves.
@ #11: Hondo? Has the fair tax changed? Last time I looked it struck me as the ultimate in fairness to the taxpayers because it was entirely dependent upon consumption instead of income. But, will admit I haven’t kept up with it.
(And this is probably not the place for that discussion! Really, not trying to derail the conversation.)
I guess we’re supposed to believe that “low-level employees” in one office, set policy for all of the IRS? Sure, I believe that, uh-huh, yep I do.
Guys, you are over thinking this. The IRS was targeting groups that want to reduce its power. Nothing scares bureaucrats more than the loss of their ability to make someone else’s life difficult. It was all about preservation of their little wonderland.
@11 Hondo
Exactly. Flat Tax, one rate, no exceptions, exemptions, or excuses.
OldSoldier54: IF I thought I could trust the Federal government to do it right, I’d actually prefer to see a flat, no exceptions sales tax instead of a flat, no exceptions income tax. Spend a buck, pay your taxes then. That gives an incentive to save and invest that taxing income across-the-board simply doesn’t.
Unfortunately, if we tried that Congress would almost certainly decide to “start slow” – and “phase in” the sales tax while eventually phasing out the income tax. And under those circumstances, “eventually” would never come.
So the next best thing would indeed be a no-exceptions flat-rate income tax.
@Bruce, thanks for the link.
I have this from my front page news:
http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653378/s/2bd9adbc/l/0Lfirstread0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A50C130C182286390Efirst0Ethoughts0Ethe0Ewhite0Ehouses0Eterrible0Ehorrible0Efriday0Espills0Eover0Dlite/story01.htm
Looks like the peeps-in-charge had maybe a bad weekend? One can only hope.
I’m not going to go into grinding harrassment of these idiots, but Lyndon Johson and Richard Nixon both look pretty tame by comparison, and both of them were control freaks in spades. LBJ always had a camera crew with him on his forays into the Kingdom of LBJ, recording everything he said and did. I had the (doubtful) privilege of watching some of those films being screened at NPC, especially when Mrs. Johnson would come over to see them. Nixon cut back on the camera crew and made his own recordings, as we all know.
These people now have a viciousness about them that neither Tricky Dick nor LBJ had.
I think Pennsylvania proves a flat, no-deductions, tax works fairly well. Sometimes we property owners take it in the rear with our property taxes, but that’s not the fault of our income tax situation.
For Democrats that have the knee-jerk whine that a flat tax would be regressive, they should consider that Pennsylvania embraced it under Milton Shapp. But we don’t produce Democrats like him anymore.
BK: yeah, I’ve never quite gotten how treating everybody the same in any context was being discriminatory. But maybe that’s just me.
I’m curious, though – does PA do that for ALL income, or is there a “lower cutoff” below which no taxes are owed? Because if it’s the latter, it’s not truly a flat tax system. Instead, it’s a progressive tax with 2 income “brackets”, the lower of which has a tax rate of 0%.
@21 Hondo
Same here, for the same reasons.
Using the IRS to attack conservatives is old hat. The Clintons perfected the art from 1993-2000.
Hondo and Sparky, that was the story this morning on the local news. I saw the other story, that it started at the top, earlier before that story was read on the news.
The idea that it comes from low-level employees is, as we all know, ridiculous but the station that it came from is not known for their investigative reporting skills.
[…] that “IRS thing” Doc Baily and I have each written about previously here at TAH? You know, where private advocacy groups were apparently targeted for “special […]