IRS targeted groups that criticized the government, IG report says
By Juliet Eilperin, Published: May 12, 2013 at 2:30 pmE-mail reporter
At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
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.http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ment-ig-report-says/
Time to scrap the whole IRS and its b**ch of a mother, the Federal Reserve! Neither one serves the nation. Both exist only to loot and control the people, and both are unconstitutional.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
What I find amazing is that the FBI has been secretly spying on the American people's google searches without a warrant, yet for three years the FBI couldn't intercept any searches inside the IRS of searches for phrases like "tea party", "patriot", and "constitution" to target political opposition.
IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Monday, May 13, 8:09 PM
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.
IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.
Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.
Then commissioner, Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.
Republicans have spent the past four-and-a-half years jumping from one faux outrage to the next to avoid doing the jobs they were sent to Washington to do, and while they are still embroiled in the fantasy Benghazi scandal, they have latched on to a report the IRS allegedly gave extra attention and over-scrutinized neo-conservative teabagger’s applications for tax exempt status.
The IRS’s job is to scrutinize applications for tax exemption and the truth is they do not scrutinize tax exempt organizations nearly enough or thoroughly to guarantee that a group adheres to the rules while they avoid paying taxes like every other American. However, Republicans have thei r proverbial panties in a wad because the IRS was looking carefully at organizations that are decidedly anti-government and anti-American, and because they did their jobs, Republicans are crying foul and alleging a scandal giving them more reason to defund the IRS. It is not that Republicans needed any reason to defund their paymasters’ mortal enemy, but instead of criticizing the IRS, they deserve praise for doing their jobs.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
The guilt goes right to the top of the IRS. No doubt Obama will throw the head of the IRS to the wolves to save himself.......just like Nixon did with Attorney General John Mitchell. And like that previous case, it will not work.
.....different side......same corrupt government coin!!!!!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Yet Another GOP Bogus Scandal Falls Apart... the IRS also Targeted Liberals
Another Republican Obama scandal is starting to fall apart too. The IRS didn’t just target conservative groups. They also questioned the tax exempt status of liberal groups too.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Tuesday, May 14, 5:27 PM E-mail the writers
The Internal Revenue Service developed “inappropriate criteria” focused on conservative groups that stalled work on most of the organizations’ applications for nearly 13 months, according to a report issued by the Treasury Inspector General on Tuesday. Treasury Department Inspector General issued a report Tuesday on the Internal Revenue Service's focus on conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. The report, which is due to be released this week, said the targeting campaign would “stay in place for more than 18 months.” Of the 298 total applications the IG report reviewed as of Dec. 17, “108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the application, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two election cycles.)”
The IG report said that the IRS officials had a range of criteria for potential political cases that include the terms “tea party,” “patriots” and “9/12 Project;” issues including government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public about how to “make America a better place to live;” or a statement in the case file criticizing how the country is being run.
Applications that met these criteria were added to a “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) listing, meaning they required further scrutiny.
IRS officials told the inspector general that they did not consult anyone outside the agency about the screening and that they considered the screening essentially shorthand. http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....e_story.html?hpid=z1
By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Tuesday, May 14, 5:27 PM E-mail the writers
The Internal Revenue Service developed “inappropriate criteria” focused on conservative groups that stalled work on most of the organizations’ applications for nearly 13 months, according to a report issued by the Treasury Inspector General on Tuesday. Treasury Department Inspector General issued a report Tuesday on the Internal Revenue Service's focus on conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. The report, which is due to be released this week, said the targeting campaign would “stay in place for more than 18 months.” Of the 298 total applications the IG report reviewed as of Dec. 17, “108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the application, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two election cycles.)”
The IG report said that the IRS officials had a range of criteria for potential political cases that include the terms “tea party,” “patriots” and “9/12 Project;” issues including government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public about how to “make America a better place to live;” or a statement in the case file criticizing how the country is being run.
Applications that met these criteria were added to a “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) listing, meaning they required further scrutiny.
IRS officials told the inspector general that they did not consult anyone outside the agency about the screening and that they considered the screening essentially shorthand. http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....e_story.html?hpid=z1
Yet Another GOP Bogus Scandal Falls Apart... the IRS also Targeted Liberals
Another Republican Obama scandal is starting to fall apart too. The IRS didn’t just target conservative groups. They also questioned the tax exempt status of liberal groups too.
Sounds like damage control to me, they still targeted people for political purposes, that is illegal, who gives a sh*t if it was conservative groups or liberal groups, why are you defending this box?
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’5:06 PM 05/14/2013
Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.
According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the Foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.
Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization. Ads by Google
The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the Foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.
Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008.
The group’s available paperwork suggests an extremely hurried application and approval process. For example, the group’s 990 filings for 2008 and 2009 were submitted to the IRS on May 30, 2011, and its 2010 filing was submitted on May 23, 2011.
Lerner signed the group’s approval [pdf] on June 26, 2011.
It is illegal to operate for longer than 27 months without an IRS determination and solicit tax-deductible contributions. Ads by Google
The ostensibly Arlington, VA-based charity was not even registered in Virginia despite the foundation’s website including a donation button that claimed tax-exempt status.
Its president and founder, Abon’go “Roy’ Malik Obama, is Barack Obama’s half-brother and was the best man at his wedding, but he has a checkered past. In addition to running his charity, Malik Obama ran unsuccessfully to be the governor of Siaya County in Kenya. He was accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.
Sensing something wrong when he and a group of Missouri State students visited Kenyan in 2009, Ken Rutherford, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on banning landmines, [IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’]
[IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’]
Under IRS law, political organizations cannot be tax-exempt, so all applicants who used the words "Tea Party" or "Patriot" were required to prove in great detail they were a social welfare organization to qualify. Of course, this is TYRANNY.
Sounds like damage control to me, they still targeted people for political purposes, that is illegal, who gives a sh*t if it was conservative groups or liberal groups, why are you defending this box?
Targeting likely tax evaders is a logical place to start when you have limited resources and time.
Quoted Text
Each year the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 applications from groups ranging from charities to labor unions that want to be classified as tax-exempt. "Social welfare" groups dedicated to the general good can be tax-exempt under tax law 501(c)4.
These groups do not have to disclose the identities of their donors and they can spend money on advertising for general issues, but they may not endorse specific candidates or parties.
The U.S. Supreme Court's January 2010 "Citizens United" ruling unleashed a torrent of new political spending and 501(c)4 groups became a popular conduit for some of it, on both ends of the political spectrum, but especially for conservatives.
The number of applications sent to the IRS by groups seeking 501(c)4 status rose to 3,400 in 2012 from 1,500 in 2010. As money poured into 501(c)4 groups, campaign finance activists began to raise questions and demanded a crackdown by the IRS.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Targeting likely tax evaders is a logical place to start when you have limited resources and time.
It was politically motivated and had nothing to do with tax evasion, leave it to you to try to spin what these pieces of crap did.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
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