IRS Internal Revenue Service

[American_Jihad]

Lets take a good look at the IRS under the obama administration...

Crony Capitalism at the IRS

July 31, 2013 By Michael Volpe

An information technology (IT) company used its connections to land approximately $500 million in government contracts with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the period of a year and half, even though the company had less than $1 million in total revenue prior to the awarding of these contracts, according to a new House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs report.

The name of the company is Strong Castle and it is the subject of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, completed in June 2013. According to the report, a cozy relationship between the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Braulio Castillo, and an official with the Internal Revenue Service named Greg Roseman led Strong Castle to receive lucrative contracts the company didn’t earn.

The committee’s report found that Strong Castle had been in business less than two years total before the company began bidding on hundreds of millions in lucrative IT contracts with the IRS.

...

As a result of ObamaCare, IT companies like CNSI will be in line to bid on tens of billions of government contracts in order to upgrade Medicare and Medicaid IT systems, a requirement of the health care law.

The investigation into the relationship between the Obama administration and the IT industry by Front Page Magazine is only beginning to unfold, however all the evidence uncovered so far shows that classic crony capitalist relationships are afoot.


Crony Capitalism at the IRS | FrontPage Magazine

 

[American_Jihad]

Shock Testimony: IRS still targeting Tea Party groups​

Friday, Aug 9, 2013

Glenn opened the radio program this morning with a stunning story out of Washington D.C. According to testimony released Thursday by the House Ways and Mean Committee, an unidentified IRS agent told Congress that the agency is still targeting conservatives – three months after the scandal first came to light.

The agent’s remarks come from closed-door testimony and were made public by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI). In response to questioning, the agent said Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status are still subjected to “secondary screening” in his IRS office.

“The IRS is still, still targeting Tea Party,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “This is incredible.”

The Washington Examiner provided this transcript of the IRS agent’s testimony:

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Shock Testimony: IRS still targeting Tea Party groups ? Glenn Beck

 

[American_Jihad]

Obama’s IRS Still Persecuting Conservatives

August 23, 2013 By Michael Volpe

About three months after revelations first came out that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative non-profit groups, the targeting continues largely unabated with many of the same IRS officials doing the same kind of targeting in much the same way.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Republican Dave Camp sent a letter on August 12, 2013 to acting IRS Chief Dan Werfel complaining that an IRS agent had told Ways and Means Committee investigators that they were still being instructed to flag groups with the term “Tea Party” in their name for extra scrutiny.

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Front Page Magazine has found evidence to corroborate that claim. In one correspondence with an unidentified pro-Israel group, the IRS agent in charge of the case, Tracy Dornette, asks the group, “Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel? Describe your organization’s religious belief system toward the land of Israel.”

Neither question, said Marcus, should have anything to do with determining the tax exempt status of a group.

While President Obama claimed when this scandal first broke to be taking it seriously, it appears as though, for the most part, it’s business as usual for the IRS. Many of the same IRS agents who were in the middle of the targeting which became the subject of the explosive Office of Inspector General report continue to work in the same capacity, carrying on the same way at the IRS.

Obama?s IRS Still Persecuting Conservatives | FrontPage Magazine

 

[American_Jihad]

Glitch?: IRS Funnels Billions to Illegal Aliens

October 15, 2013 By Arnold Ahlert

While many conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status were singled out for extra scrutiny by the IRS, a commensurate level of calculated disinterest was demonstrated with regard to illegal aliens. A bombshell report, “Paying Illegals to Stay” written by Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow David North reveals that the Treasury has paid out a whopping $4.2 billion to the families of illegal aliens.

“This particular paying-the-illegals-to-stay pattern revolves around the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), which is not so much a tax credit as it is an income-transfer program for low-income families, offering up to $1,000 per child to all resident families, including those of illegal aliens,” North explains.

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After the 2011 IG report was issued, Republicans in Congress attempted to address the problem. Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) introduced HR 1956: Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act. The bill would require individuals to produce a Social Security number in order to claim “the refundable portion of their child tax credit.” It died on May 24, 2011.

Meanwhile, the IRS continues to maintain that it does not have the authority to prevent illegal aliens from getting fraudulent tax refunds. It further contends it lacks the legal authority to deny claims, even when they fail to include documents showing the children actually live in the United States. That would be the same IRS whose scrutiny of conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status was meticulous at best, and illegal at worst. It is precisely those warped priorities that have many Americans wondering if the agency should be abolished altogether. When the IRS is “paying illegals to stay,” it might be an idea whose time has come.

Glitch?: IRS Funnels Billions to Illegal Aliens | FrontPage Magazine

 

[American_Jihad]

Wal-Mart, Xerox blame each other for food stamps spree​

23 hr ago |By Kathy Finn of Reuters

Reuters Louisiana food stamp recipients stripped bare the shelves of some Walmart stores when a computer glitch left their debit cards with no limits.

Throngs of shoppers flooded Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana on Saturday, buying groceries using electronic benefit cards that contained no credit limits.

NEW ORLEANS — Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Xerox Corp blamed each other on Monday after Louisiana food stamp recipients stripped bare the shelves of some Walmart stores when a computer glitch left their debit cards with no limits.

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Wal-Mart, Xerox blame each other for food stamps spree

 

[American_Jihad]

Republican Leaders Fight Back Against IRS Power Grab

February 10, 2014 by Matthew Vadum

Republicans are fighting back against proposed new IRS rules that they say would make formal the tax agency’s infamous crackdown on Tea Party groups that oppose the Obama agenda, stripping them of their free speech rights during election cycles.

“Every American needs to know about this abuse of power,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said in a recent speech on the Senate floor. “Let me be clear: What the administration is proposing poses a grave threat to the ability of ordinary Americans to freely participate in the Democratic process.”

The new rules, first unveiled around Thanksgiving when no one was paying attention, would prevent so-called 501c4 advocacy groups from participating in certain kinds of political activity. Such nonprofit organizations would be prevented from communicating with voters about candidates or political parties within 60 days of a general election.

On the House side, Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Dave Camp (Mich.), and Hal Rogers (Ky.) have signed a letter asking newly minted IRS chief John Koskinen to kill new proposed regulations dating from November that they say are intended to silence conservative groups.

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Congressional tax-writing chief Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said Madrigal’s missive meant that new rules were being developed as a “remedy to the target[ing]” that took place in 2011 and 2012. “I’m pretty sure [off-plan] means ‘hidden from the public,’” said Camp, who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Investigators still haven’t interviewed many conservative groups that were denied tax-exempt status while their liberal counterparts sailed through the nonprofit status-granting process.

Republican Leaders Fight Back Against IRS Power Grab | FrontPage Magazine

 

[American_Jihad]

IRS Targets Conservative Groups, Again

Paul Strand
2/12/14

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service caused an uproar last year when they targeted Tea Party groups. Now it seems they're doing it again.

Quietly over Thanksgiving, the IRS announced new rules that critics say would allow the agency to continue its tough targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups.

The rules appear aimed at silencing conservative organizations before the next crucial elections.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, explained why he believes the decision to target conservative groups came from the highest levels of the IRS on The 700 Club, Feb. 12 .

Lawyer Cleta Mitchell represented some of these groups when the IRS held up their tax-exempt status for years.

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Mitchell said what the IRS was doing quietly from 2009 to 2013 it's now doing openly to the kind of 501(c)(4) groups like most of the Tea Parties.

"Now the IRS in plain sight is trying to make permanent all the awful things they were doing to Tea Party groups and now extend that to every 501(c)(4) organization in America and to make it permanent," Mitchell said. "It's really quite dreadful."

"And it is indeed targeted. They know who they're trying to shut up," she added.

Mitchell said she believes the IRS is going to do everything it can to silence Americans who want to talk about how elected officials voted on Obamacare.

"I actually believe that that is the fundamental reason for all of this effort," she said.

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IRS Targets Conservative Groups, Again - Politics - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com

Sooner or later paybacks is gonna be a bitch...

 

[R.C. Christian]

I approve this thread.

 

[American_Jihad]

Lois Lerner’s Lies and Cover-Up Revealed

March 12, 2014 by Matthew Vadum

Former IRS mandarin Lois Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation, according to a damning report released yesterday by congressional investigators.

The report came out six days after Lerner appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under subpoena and for a second time refused to testify about IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at the committee’s website.) At the March 5 hearing, which was a continuation of a hearing started last year, Lerner again opted to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

President Obama has claimed that there was not even “a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS affair but anyone with eyes knows the Obama administration has been stonewalling and intimidating witnesses who know the ugly truth about these Third World banana republic-style tax abuses.

Democrats correctly view Tea Party groups, that is, right-wing populist groups, as an existential threat to the Left. These nonprofits tend to be Republican-leaning organizations and they have been successful so far in derailing, or at least slowing, parts of President Obama’s ongoing transformation of America. Many left-wingers don’t believe such groups are legitimate and don’t want them granted official recognition and tax-exempt status by the IRS.

The report also comes as lawmakers consider whether to cite Lerner for contempt of Congress.

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Predictably, media figures such as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer hammered Issa, accusing him of being rude to Cummings, a left-wing sacred cow because he is considered to have been a civil rights leader in the Sixties. House Democrats savaged Issa and even moved a resolution that condemned him, but the resolution was easily voted down. Issa soon caved to media-manufactured pressure and apologized to Cummings, thereby vindicating the Democrat’s gimmicky bit of political theater.

There is little doubt that Obama defenders will dream up still more distractions to keep the public’s eye off the IRS scandal in the lead-up to the November congressional elections.

Lois Lerner?s Lies and Cover-Up Revealed | FrontPage Magazine

 

[depotoo]

http://oversight.house.gov/report/s...ement-irs-targeting-tax-exempt-organizations/

The above link has the report.
For anyone interested go to page 56 to see correspondence thusly singling out "tea party" groups. There is much more within it but this is very damning.

 

[Disir]

The Treasury inspector general (IG) whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans.

A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.”

The inspector general’s audit found that groups seeking tax-exempt status with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their name did receive extra attention from the IRS, with some facing years of delay and inappropriate questions from the agency.

But top congressional Democrats have wielded new information from the IRS this week that liberal groups were also flagged for extra attention on the sorts of “be on the lookout” lists (BOLOs) that also tripped up conservative groups.

The spokesman for the Treasury inspector general noted their audit acknowledged there were other watch lists. But the spokesman added: "We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit.”

The admission from the inspector general comes as Democrats have sharpened their criticism of George, with Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) dubbing the audit fundamentally flawed on Monday.

Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, stressed to The Hill on Tuesday that the inspector general did not say the audit was limited to Tea Party groups when it was released in mid-May.

The Michigan Democrat also maintained that the audit’s shortcoming had emboldened Republicans to try to link the targeting of Tea Party groups to the White House.

“You need to get at the facts. And those facts weren’t given to us, even when asked,” Levin said. “The Republicans used the failure of the IG to spell out what they knew as an opportunity to totally politicize this.”

Levin’s office first disclosed on Monday that the term “progressive” was also included in the lists until this year and urged the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) to bring George back for more testimony.

And while the inspector general’s office has not said they knew about BOLOs flagging liberal groups, Ways and Means Democrats said Monday that progressive organizations were among the almost 300 groups the inspector general examined for his audit.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who questioned George about whether liberal groups were singled out at an Oversight hearing last month, also said Tuesday that it appears the inspector general's answers "were at best incomplete, if not misleading."

Camp and other Republicans have insisted that the evidence so far points to conservative groups receiving more scrutiny from the IRS, even if organizations across the political spectrum were on BOLOs.

Republicans at the House Oversight panel, for instance, have noted that the watch lists specifically said that Tea Party applications should be sent to Washington for examination, while the progressive entry does not.

GOP lawmakers have lobbed their own criticism at George, with Issa noting that the inspector general allowed Holly Paz, an IRS official at the center of the controversy, to sit in on interviews.

“It’s one thing to say we listed them all down,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), a senior Republican on the Oversight panel. “To me, it’s still the exact same fact. They targeted conservative groups. Some groups still haven’t had any resolution to their application for tax-exempt status.”

Read more: IG: Audit of IRS actions limited to Tea Party groups at GOP request | TheHill
Follow us: [MENTION=27326]The[/MENTION]hill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook


So, what does Issa really want? I know what he wants.

 

[American_Jihad]

Report: IRS Used Cell Phone Spying Equipment for Investigations
Because the IRS isn't unscrupulous enough.
10.26.2015
News
Tiffany Gabbay

Because the IRS isn't unscrupulous enough. A disturbing, if not unsurprising report published by the Guardian reveals that the Internal Revenue Service used “sophisticated cellphone dragnet equipment” to spy on Americans. What's more, it is relatively easy to obtain a warrant to use the equipment, dubbed a “Stingray,” which simulates a cell-phone tower in order to capture the cell-signals and the data contained therein.

Invoices obtained following a request under the Freedom of Information Act show purchases made in 2009 and 2012 by the federal tax agency with Harris Corporation, one of a number of companies that manufacture the devices. Privacy advocates said the revelation “shows the wide proliferation of this very invasive surveillance technology”.

The 2009 IRS/Harris Corp invoice is mostly redacted under section B(4) of the Freedom of Information Act, which is intended to protect trade secrets and privileged information. However, an invoice from 2012, which is also partially redacted, reports that the agency spent $65,652 on upgrading a Stingray II to a HailStorm, a more powerful version of the same device, as well as $6,000 on training from Harris Corporation.

Despite their extensive capabilities, they require only a low-level court order called a PEN register, also known as a “trap and trace”, to grant permission for their use.

The ACLU, forever the protector of our rights, is also investigating. Thus far, it "remains unclear how the IRS used the Stingray devices" and of course, the agency has declined to comment.

Immense secrecy has so far surrounded these devices, but a picture is slowly emerging which shows widespread use. Various revelations by the American Civil Liberties Union and news outlets including the Guardian had shown that at least 12 federal agencies are already known to have these devices, including the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The IRS makes 13.

A former IRS agent, however, did expand on the potential motivation behind the IRS' use of Stingrays.

Mark Matthews, a former deputy commissioner for services and enforcement at the agency who now works for the law firm Caplin and Drysdale, said that while he attends many conferences on IRS and tax law enforcement, he had not heard any “scuttlebutt” about the agency’s use of Stingray.

Matthews said there are currently between 2,000 and 3,000 “special agents” in the IRS who form the criminal investigation division (CID). They have the ability to get PEN register orders – the only authority needed to use Stingray devices.

He said the IRS on its own usually uses gentler investigation tactics. But increasingly, investigating agents from the agency are brought on board for joint operations with the FBI and other agencies when the latter need financial expertise to look at, for example, money laundering from drug organisations. From these joint operations, he said, “the IRS had moved to drug work and had learned a lot of aggressive techniques in the money laundering and drug world, and these bad habits were leaking over into the tax world, which was supposed to be their real mission”.

This is always how it begins. Recall that in an effort to apprehend terrorists, the Patriot Act was born, even under a Republican administration. Now, under the guise of nabbing drug-lords, the IRS is given access to spy equipment. How easy it becomes then to use that equipment on anyone, anytime, for any reason.

...

What members of the Left often fail to realize is that advocating for big government invites the very breeches the ACLU is decrying here. They never seem to put two and two together -- that it is easy for Americans' freedoms and privacy to be stripped away, right from under their noses, and oftentimes with their own (if unwitting) blessing.

Report: IRS Used Cell Phone Spying Equipment for Investigations

 

[American_Jihad]

Of Course: Democrats Defend IRS Commissioner, Slam Impeachment Resolution
Katie Pavlich | Oct 28, 2015

Yesterday Republican members of the House Oversight Committee introduced a resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for a variety of offenses.

You can read the details of the impeachment resolution and the charges against Koskinen here. Also keep in mind that earlier this year a federal judge threatened to "haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally in contempt" for failing to comply with court mandated document requests surrounding the IRS targeting of conservatives under former IRS official Lois Lerner.

Now House Democrats, with Oversight Ranking Member Elijah Cummings leading the way, are defending Koskinen and slamming the impeachment resolution.

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As a result of Cummings' behavior, True The Vote filed an ethics complaint against him.

The House will vote on the impeachment resolution for Koskinen in the coming days.

Of Course: Democrats Defend IRS Commissioner, Slam Impeachment Resolution

 

[American_Jihad]

IRS whistleblower finds millions in unverified tax refunds

Fiscal Times
Eric Pianin6 hrs ago

As it braces for another tax season, the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service has received a highly mixed review on its performance in detecting and thwarting income tax fraud.

On the positive side, the agency’s monitoring system prevented more than $15 billion in fraud during 2014, according to a new audit report issued this week by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

Based on a review of 2.18 million tax returns, the system uncovered $10.5 billion of fraud due to identity theft and $4.96 billion of other fraudulent activity, according to the report.

However, a computer programming error and what the IG deemed as the ineffective monitoring of potentially fraudulent tax returns resulted in the erroneous release of more than $46 million in refunds last year before the IRS could confirm the information was correct, according to the report.

The IG’s investigative staff initiated the audit after an IRS whistleblower reported that the IRS was not working some taxpayer cases involving refunds. As a result, there was a good chance those refunds would be automatically released by computer before the agency could verify the accuracy of reported income and withholding information.

The IRS and its enforcement operations have become a popular punching bag in Washington in recent years, especially after Republican lawmakers began hammering officials and slashing their budgets amid accusations of legally suspect oversight of conservative, tax-exempt organizations. In this case, the shortcomings in the review process appear relatively minor compared to the billions of dollars of tax fraud thwarted by agency’s Integrity and verification operations.

Related: IRS Scandal Strikes a Severe Blow to Big Government

However, the IG cautioned that even minor errors in issuing tax returns before questions have been cleared up can snowball into much larger losses of tax revenue to the government.

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IRS whistleblower finds millions in unverified tax refunds