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IG Report: IRS ‘Improperly Withheld’ FOIA Request Information

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Sept. 30 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS may have violated taxpayer rights by improperly withholding or not adequately searching for and providing information responsive to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

TIGTA also found that “sensitive taxpayer information was inadvertently disclosed in response to nine (16.4 percent) of the FOIA/Privacy Act and four (7.4 percent) of the I.R.C. § 6103 information requests reviewed.”

“TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid sample of 55 FOIA/Privacy Act information requests from a population of 3,415 FOIA/Privacy Act requests and found nine (16.4 percent) in which taxpayer rights may have been violated because the IRS improperly withheld or failed to adequately search for and provide information to requestors,” the report, titled Fiscal Year 2013 Statutory Review of Compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, said.

The IRS hired 21 new disclosure specialists in Fiscal Year 2012 and 24 new specialists in 2011, TIGTA said.

“The influx of new employees may be a contributing factor to the increased instances of taxpayer information being either erroneously withheld or not provided in error,” TIGTA said.

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IRS Watchdog: $67 Million Missing from Obamacare Slush Fund

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Photo Credit: thomasmoresociety

Photo Credit: thomasmoresociety

The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today.

The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare.

According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify approximately $67 million [from the slush fund] of indirect ACA costs incurred for Fiscal Years 2010 through 2012.”

The report also found several other abuses of taxpayer funds…

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Facing Threats of Termination, Official at Heart Of IRS Scandal “Retiring”

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Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

Facing a possible firing, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency’s tea party scandal retired Monday, ending one chapter in a ruckus that has engulfed the tax-collection agency since spring.

Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status when she was placed on paid leave in May. While she was in charge, the agency acknowledged that agents improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Lerner first disclosed the targeting at a law conference in May, when she was asked a planted question about IRS treatment of political groups. Less than two weeks later, she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, citing her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.

A day after the hearing she was placed on paid leave at the age of 62.

Lerner’s retirement came as a review board was set to propose that she be fired, said a statement by Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

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Beanie Babies Creator Charged with Tax Evasion

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The creator of some of the world’s most beloved stuffed animals is getting no love from the IRS.

Ty Warner, who made billions when demand exploded for his Beanie Babies in the 1990s, was charged Wednesday with federal tax evasion, accused of failing to report more than $3 million he earned in a secret offshore account.

Warner, 69, has agreed to plead guilty and will pay a civil penalty of $53.6 million, his lawyer, George Scandaglia, said in a statement.

“This is an unfortunate situation that Mr. Warner has been trying to resolve for several years now,” Scandaglia said. “Mr. Warner accepts full responsibility for his actions with this plea agreement.”

Warner, ranked 209th on Forbes Magazine’s list of richest Americans with an estimated worth of $2.6 billion, generally sold his Beanie Babies for less than $10. At the peak of their popularity in the 1990s, resale of some favored versions could draw several times their retail value.

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Audit Finds IRS Employees Don’t Follow Their Own Rules

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The Internal Revenue Service does not always follow its own rules when attempting to collect unpaid taxes, according to a new audit.

A review of the IRS Office of Appeals, which resolves disputes between the agency and taxpayers, found officials did not always follow proper procedures when dealing with taxpayers or their legally designated representatives. Under the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, agents in the office are required to stop taking action against taxpayers if the taxpayer asks to consult with a representative – a financial assistant or the like.

It’s similar to how a suspect can request a lawyer before answering questions from police.

From that point forward, any action taken by the IRS is supposed to include the taxpayers’ official representative. But many times it does not.

In 11 of the 96 cases audited by theTreasury Inspector General, IRS employees violated those rules in one way or another – usually by contacting the taxpayer directly without going through the official legal channels.

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Emails Show IRS’ Lois Lerner Specifically Targeted Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Tea Party

Photo Credit: Tea Party

Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the Internal Revenue Service scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups, specifically targeted tea party applications and directed that they be held up in 2011 in order to come up with an agency policy, according to several of Ms. Lerner’s emails released by a House committee Thursday.

In one 2011 email, Ms. Lerner specifically calls the tea party applications for tax-exempt status problematic, which seems to counter Democrats’ arguments that tea party groups weren’t targeted.

“Tea Party Matter very dangerous,” Ms. Lerner wrote in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.

In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency’s handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said steps had been taken to correct problems.

“It is what it is,” she wrote in the email, released Thursday by the Ways and Means Committee. “Although the original story isn’t as pretty as we’d like, once we learned [that we were] off track, we have done what we can to change the process, better educate our staff and move the cases. So, we will get dinged, but we took steps before the ‘dinging’ to make things better and we have written procedures.”

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Majority: IRS Blunders Grounds for Impeachment

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Let’s see, under Barack Obama the IRS targeted conservatives and Christians with harassment, dozens of “czars” were appointed, Arizona was sued for trying to enforce federal immigration laws, the government refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and the National Security Agency spied on Americans.

No wonder more conservative Americans already have been wondering why Obama is allowed to get away with such antics and whether impeachment might not be the solution the Founders ordered.

But now the worry is spreading, with a new poll showing most American voters believe there are multiple grounds for Obama’s impeachment.

The national telephone survey of registered voters by Wenzel Strategies was done Aug. 23-28 with a margin of error of 3.67 percentage points.

It has been revealed that under Obama’s watch, the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservatives with harassment that curbed their influence during the 2012 election, which Obama won.

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IRS Obstructs Efforts to Stop Illegals from Fraudulent Use of Social Security Numbers

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irs_An audit report published this month by the inspector general for the Social Security Administration says that the Internal Revenue Service’s reluctance to penalize employers who consistently file W-2s on which the Social Security Number and name do not match has “hindered” the SSA’s efforts to stop “unauthorized noncitizens” from using Social Security Numbers that are fake or belong to someone else.

The audit report looked at “inaccurate wage reporting”—or the filing of W-2 forms on which the name and the Social Security Number do not match. The SSA has long said these no-match W-2s are frequently filed on behalf of illegal aliens. According to the IG audit report released earlier this month, a senior IRS official admitted to the IG that the service knows this is the case.

“Furthermore,” said the report, “a senior employment tax official at the IRS acknowledged that unauthorized noncitizens accounted for a high percentage of inaccurate wage reporting.”

The audit looked at the U.S. employers who in tax years 2007-2009 (the latest for which all data was available) had the worst records for filing W-2s on which the names and Social Security Numbers did not match.

The IG determined the 100 employers who filed the the largest raw numbers of no-match W-2s in those three years and the 100 employers (with at least 100 employees a piece) who filed the most as a percentage of their payrolls.

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Gay Marriages Get Recognition From the I.R.S. in All States

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

All same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as such for federal tax purposes, even if the state where they live does not recognize their union, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday.

It is the broadest federal rule change to come out of the landmark Supreme Court decision in June that struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and a sign of how quickly the government is moving to treat gay couples in the same way that it does straight couples.

The June decision found that same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits, but left open the question of how Washington would actually administer them. The Treasury Department answered some of those questions on Thursday. As of the 2013 tax year, same-sex spouses who are legally married will not be able to file federal tax returns as if either were single. Instead, they must file together as “married filing jointly” or individually as “married filing separately.”

Their address or the location of their wedding does not matter, as long as the marriage is legal: a same-sex couple who marry in Albany, N.Y., and move to Alabama are treated the same as a same-sex couple who marry and live in Massachusetts.

“Today’s ruling provides certainty and clear, coherent tax-filing guidance for all legally married same-sex couples nationwide,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said. “This ruling also assures legally married same-sex couples that they can move freely throughout the country knowing that their federal filing status will not change.”

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IRS Profiling Expands: American Legion Now Targeted, Lois Lerner Believed Responsible

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The Internal Revenue Service is targeting the veterans’ organization the American Legion, and a U.S. senator believes that Lois Lerner — a key figure in the IRS scandal – is to blame.

“The IRS now requires American Legion posts to maintain dates of service and character of service records for all members… The penalty for not having the required proof of eligibility is, apparently, $1,000 per day,” the American Legion stated.

The American Legion was referring to a 13-part section of Part 4, Chapter 76 of the Internal Revenue Manual pertaining to “veterans’ organizations.”

The section falls under “Exempt Organizations Examination Guidelines,” which is the jurisdiction of Exempt Organizations head Lois Lerner, who apologized for improperly targeting tea party groups and tried to plead the Fifth Amendment in a congressional hearing.

“The American Legion has recently learned of the so-called IRS ‘audit manual’ and is concerned that portions of it attempt to amend statutes passed by Congress and approved by the president,” American Legion legal counsel Philip Onderdonk, Jr. told The Daily Caller.

Read more from this story HERE.