Photo Credit: KTVAEight Anchorage residents are accused of scamming the Municipality of Anchorage out of more than $1.3 million in tax revenue.
Prosecutors say the defendants are owners and operators of retail stores who collectively purchased cigarettes from two wholesale distributors in Anchorage and lied about where they were going to resell the products in order to avoid paying MOA taxes.
Court documents reveal the scheme took place from 2009 until October 2012.
Wholesale distributors rely on merchant customers to be honest about where they plan on reselling cigarettes. Federal prosecutors say the defendants told the wholesalers in Anchorage that the cigarettes were destined for retail stores in Kenai and Sterling, where there are no taxes on tobacco products.
Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Peggy Noonan. The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.
That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn’t say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.
Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency…
Mr. Hull [a retired, 48-year veteran of the IRS] told House investigators that at some point in the winter of 2010-11, Ms. Lerner’s senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the applications would require further review [by the IRS Chief Counsel]…
The IRS chief counsel is named William Wilkins. And again, he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS. Read more from this story HERE.
IRS Inspector Attacked by Democrats, Claims Liberals’ Treatment of IG is “Unprecedented”
By Fox News. The government watchdog who issued the report that found the IRS was targeting conservative groups was turned into a punching bag by Democrats in the second half of a tense hearing Thursday, leading Inspector General J. Russell George to chide lawmakers for their attacks on his office.
“This is unprecedented,” he said of his treatment before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the end of the hearing.
The first half of the hearing was devoted to testimony from IRS officials who claimed higher-ups in Washington, D.C., were involved in applying additional scrutiny to Tea Party and other groups. Read more from this story HERE.
Rep. Chaffetz Lets Administration Have It Over Misleading Nation on IRS Scandal
“When you have the spokesman for the president of the United States make a definitive statement that it was two rogue agents, and start poking at these people who have no power to do anything about it, that is wrong,” Rep. Chaffetz stated during congressional hearings on the IRS scandal today.
FOX News reporter Carl Cameron told Bill O’Reilly tonight that on Thursday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has information that will move the IRS scandal up into the White House.
“What he said to me today was make sure to watch tomorrow’s hearing because he’s going to present the evidence to prove it…. That he can get it right up all the way into the White House before it was all revealed.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-18 03:13:512016-04-11 11:18:57Fox News Says Rep. Issa Will Reveal White House Connection to IRS Scandal at Today’s Hearing (+video)
By Wall Street Journal. We’re starting to understand why Lois Lerner took the Fifth about her role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. The testimony of at least three more employees in the IRS Washington office is now making clear that Ms. Lerner and other Washington IRS officials had a direct hand in slow rolling the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups in an election season.
The House Oversight Committee holds another hearing Thursday that will showcase some of these witnesses. According to Washington IRS tax law specialist Carter Hull, his supervisor Ronald Shoemaker and Manager of Exempt Organizations Technical Michael Seto, tea party applications were intentionally singled out for extra layers of review and put through an unusual process.
Mr. Hull told House investigators that normally his judgment about applications would have been enough to approve or deny their tax-exempt status. Instead of sending those applications through the normal channel, however, conservative applications were sent through Ms. Lerner’s office for review, and also directed to the IRS chief counsel. That process was highly unusual and created a vetting system in which applications were interminably delayed.
According to Mr. Hull, starting in April 2010, he was told by a supervisor to give extra attention to some tea party applications as a trial run for how the agency might handle such cases going forward. As part of that process, he was instructed to send the applications through Ms. Lerner’s office and the office of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins for additional scrutiny.
Once he delivered them, however, the process stalled… Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsHow high did it go? Republicans to step up pressure on IRS at scandal hearing
By Fox News. House Republicans plan to ratchet up scrutiny of the IRS during a hearing Thursday morning where agency workers are expected to discuss the involvement of high-level officials in slowing down applications from Tea Party groups.
For the first time, the House oversight committee has invited two key agency officials to testify. Republican leaders of the committee claimed Wednesday that one of them recently revealed that the IRS chief counsel’s office — led by a political appointee — played a role, along with embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, in scrutinizing conservative groups. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Daily CallerIRS lawyer says scandal was overseen by D.C., names names
By Patrick Howley. Top IRS officials in Washington, D.C. planned and oversaw the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, according to the 72-year old retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday before the House Oversight Committee.
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George will return to Republican chairman Darrell Issa’s committee Thursday along with two central characters in the IRS saga: Hull and Cincinnati-based IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre, who previously gave Hull’s name to congressional investigators, fingering him as her Washington-based supervisor. Read more from this story HERE.
By Bob Unruh. The IRS, which has been in trouble for weeks now for targeting conservative, Christian and Jewish organizations seeking tax-exempt status with invasive and probably illegal questions, still is stalling, charges a legal team in the battle.
The federal tax agency had offered an “expedited review” if the groups would agree to “an arbitrary 60/40 standard” requiring them to devote 60 percent of their time and expenditures to activities promoting social welfare and limit their political activity to 40 percent or less.
“The IRS created this standard out of thin air in an effort to placate Americans who have been unlawfully and unconstitutionally targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice.
“This so-called solution is deeply flawed and does nothing to address and correct the real problem at the IRS: a pervasive and systematic assault on conservative organizations. The IRS remains an agency incapable of self-governance or self-correction. Our federal lawsuit is moving forward to stop this abusive targeting scheme and to hold those responsible for this disturbing conduct accountable,” he said.
The IRS discrimination has been well-documented. One IRS official pleaded the Fifth and declined to respond to questions from Congress, but others in the agency have admitted to cases cited by conservative groups who were told, for example, they had to reveal the content of members’ prayers or make promises about what they would or would not say. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-18 03:06:142016-04-11 11:18:58Now We Know Why Ms. Lerner Took the Fifth: the Tax Exempt Applications Literally Went Through Her Office (+video)
Photo Credit: Evan VucciThe Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.
Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley.
In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence.
Mr. Grassley has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain why the Justice Department chose not to prosecute any of the cases. The Iowa Republican told The Washington Times that the IRS “is required to act with neutrality and professionalism, not political bias.”
The investigation did not name the government officials who obtained the IRS records improperly, nor did it reveal the identities or political parties of the people whose tax records were compromised. By law, taxpayer records at the IRS are supposed to be confidential.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 03:04:082016-04-11 11:19:10Feds Admit that IRS Targeted Political Candidates for Audit
Photo Credit: APThe question of whether to legalize illegal aliens and put them on a pathway to citizenship may be the most controversial legislative issue facing the U.S. Congress this year.
But, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), seventeen years have already passed since the Internal Revenue Service made its own “policy decision” to “’legalize’ illegal aliens.”
That policy, made those many years ago, not only determined that the IRS would treat illegal aliens the same as legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, but also that the IRS would not hand over to federal immigration authorities information about employers who appeared to be hiring large numbers of illegal aliens and about illegal aliens who filed false documents with the IRS.
As a result of the IRS’s policy, by 2010, according to TIGTA, the service was paying out $4.2 billion in refundable “Additional Child Tax Credits” to illegal aliens. In 2011, according to TIGTA, the IRS would pay more than $46 million in tax refunds to what theoretically were 23,994 illegal aliens who all used the same address in Atlanta.
The story starts in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton was president, and the Republicans controlled Congress.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-14 02:01:092016-04-11 11:19:18IRS Intentionally Paying Billions to Illegal Aliens, Won’t Turn Over Info to Immigration Officials
Photo Credit: Daily CallerActing IRS commissioner Danny Werfel’s promise to suspend taxpayer-funded bonuses to IRS officials might not be fully realized because it will violate a contract between the scandal-plagued agency and a public-employee labor union.
“In this unprecedented budget situation, I do not believe the IRS should pay performance awards this year to employees, managers or executives,” Werfel wrote in an email to IRS employees this week.
“This is not a reflection of the quality or performance of the work done by you and your colleagues, but rather an unfortunate byproduct of the difficult budgetary situation we find ourselves in,” Werfel wrote. The IRS is currently under fire after revelations that it improperly targeted the tax-exempt nonprofit status of conservative groups.
But due to a union contract Werfel will not be able to successfully halt all bonuses this year. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, said that bonuses already promised to unionized IRS workers must be paid, because the bonuses represent work done in 2012, before Werfel canceled bonuses.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsHouse Republicans want the IRS to pay for targeting political groups and are pushing legislation that would cut the tax collecting agency’s budget by $3 billion — nearly a quarter of what it received last fiscal year.
The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to start “marking up” the spending bill Wednesday.
While it’s unlikely that such a severe cut will pass both congressional chambers, it does give lawmakers another opportunity to verbally punish the agency for unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
The bill would place additional restrictions on spending at the IRS and prohibit employees from implementing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act – commonly referred to as ObamaCare. It also bans conferences, the production of videos and curbs what lawmakers see as a number of abuses at the IRS.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-10 03:25:052016-04-11 11:19:39Citing Abuses, House GOP Wants to Gut IRS’s Budget by One-Quarter (+video)
Photo Credit: APThe IRS mistakenly posted the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of Americans on a government website, the agency confirmed Monday night. One estimate put the figure as high as 100,000 names.
The numbers were posted to an IRS database for tax-exempt political groups known as 527s and first discovered by the group Public.Resource.org.
The California-based group said it learned of the “privacy breach” Tuesday while working on an unrelated audit of an “improperly vetted shipment” of IRS data on DVDs and promptly informed the agency, which shut down the site the next day.
An IRS spokesman told FoxNews.com on Monday the agency was alerted about a “substantial number” of Social Security numbers posted on the site and removed web access to the information “out of an abundance of caution.” The spokesman also said the IRS is now “assessing the situation and exploring available options.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-09 02:11:242016-04-11 11:19:43Yet Another Scandal: IRS Publicly Posts Thousands of Social Security Numbers Associated with Political Tax Exempt Groups
Photo Credit: APIn an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) said that the next stages of the IRS scandal will likely focus on the tax agency’s alleged abuse of power in areas like politically motivated audits and leaking of personal information.
“I think what we’re going to find out and I think that the deeper part is not so much the Tea Party and the ‘Patriot’ and those people who were targeted, but the information that has been leaked,” Kelly, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee which is conducting one of the congressional investigations into the matter, said in a phone interview.
“The information that the IRS has on file on people goes pretty deep into personal lives. It is being leaked out and given to people for very specific political reasons. I think this is something that should be the most chilling thing for Americans to understand.
“This is a branch of government and it is under the executive branch that can be used for a lot of different intimidation elements. Think of what these people have, think of what they have on everybody. If they leak that out to the right person at the right time in the right movement that’s looking to do something, they can completely destroy individuals.”
Kelly believes the revelation the IRS targeting of various conservative organizations was just the beginning of a larger scandal that will continue unraveling. Kelly sees this burgeoning scandal cutting to the core of the IRS as a whole, and likely tying in more prominent Obama administration officials.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-08 01:31:182016-04-11 11:19:46Congressman: IRS Has Been Leaking Personal Financial Info on Political Enemies
