Less than $4.2k to go!!
Git-R-Done!
Posted on 03/01/2014 6:09:13 PM PST by Kaslin
Citizens who flout the Internal Revenue Service face the prospect of jail, but when the IRS flouts the law, it’s business as usual. The case of Christine O’Donnell, former Delaware candidate for U.S. senator, highlights the continuing abuses by the sprawling agency charged with collecting our taxes.
Before running, O’Donnell had heard that if she chose to run in 2010 for the U.S. Senate against former Delaware governor Mike Castle, the IRS and others would “F— with her head,” in the words of a top Delaware political insider.
In short order, someone accessed O’Donnell’s tax return information containing private financial details. A U.S. Treasury agent informed O’Donnell that a Delaware state employee may have accessed her tax information and improperly used it.
After an inquiry by Senator Chuck Grassley, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration confirmed that unidentified persons, presumably IRS employees, had gained improper access to multiple individuals’ tax information. This indicates more than what President Obama would call a “smidgen of corruption.”
The IRS then wrongly attached an $11,744 tax lien to a property O’Donnell no longer owned, and political opponents speciously used the after-the-fact lien to damage O’Donnell’s standing and manufacture a tax scandal just as she launched her Senate campaign.
On top of the improper lien and the illegal access of her personal tax records, the IRS relentlessly audited and nit-picked O’Donnell’s personal finances. Three years later, the targeted fly-specking yielded … a whopping $1,100 for the federal treasury. That’s a return of $1 per audit-day. At that rate, the IRS would do far better to have its staffers panhandle in the street. Alternatively, the IRS could pursue bigger fish: The former Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, was off by approximately $48,000.
It was bad enough that the IRS would target O’Donnell with a politically motivated audit, an illegitimate lien and the public release of her private financial information. Worse than that, the misconduct in this matter inappropriately affected the outcome of a U.S. Senate election. Now, worst of all, the IRS is successfully thwarting efforts to find and prosecute illegal conduct within the agency.
All this is far afield of IRS’s stated mission to “provide America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and enforce the law with integrity and fairness to all.”
The IRS is supposed to be an apolitical, nonpartisan agency tasked with collecting revenue to fund government obligations and relies primarily on voluntary compliance by taxpayers. To succeed, the IRS must treat all taxpayers even-handedly.
Moreover, wrongdoing within the institution threatens the agency’s mission and could very well decrease the voluntary compliance so critical to the IRS’s primary task. At the time of the IRS’s audit of O’Donnell, individuals filed 140,837,499 federal income tax returns, and the IRS conducted 1,564,690 audits, or 1 percent of total returns.
The two congressional committees that oversee the IRS are now probing into the circumstances leading to the abuses that O’Donnell and others experienced.
However, even if these committees uncover outright wrongdoing, the committees will not share the information with voters or even O’Donnell herself. Under current law, the IRS need not disclose the source of the personal data breaches or improper targeting.
President Obama called it “outrageous” for the IRS to be “operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way” after revelations that the IRS targeted Tea Party groups based on their political viewpoints. Mr. Obama called the prior IRS targeting “contrary to our traditions.”
In the 65 minutes Mr. Obama devoted to his State of the Union address, he should have included as a leading priority the need to rein in an out-of-control IRS and to adopt a detailed and robust program of taxpayer rights.
In the upcoming flurry of the executive orders he has promised, Mr. Obama should take swift, effective steps to protect taxpayers from further IRS abuses. But Congress shouldn’t hold its breath.
If two congressional committees are going to invest the time and energy to probe these abuses, the least Congress could do is change the law so the victims have some assurance the perpetrators are held accountable and brought to justice. That is the only way to protect American citizens and ensure the IRS never does this to anyone again.
Doesn’t the government have the right to molest citizens at will?
I would not be surprised one bit if the GOPe had a hand in this. In fact against any Tea Party person.
Doctor Dan didn’t waste any time selling his soul.
I know that I should know this, and I did do an online search (wrong key words I would bet); however,
What does the lowercase "e" at the end of GOP signify?
Thanks, in advance, for the enlightenment.
.
I think there is no IRS employee that should feel safe from being “citizen arrested” and having their own lack of ethics used to extract every bit of evidence of what they do. The visits of Lois Lerner to the white hut should all be fully documented and guilty parties should never see the light of day as an example for those tempted by power and corruption.
It stands for “elite”. It’s how we designate the republicans who couldn’t care less about smaller government.
Until we decide it DOESN'T have the right they will continue to do it.
I had an older kid pick on me all the time when I was young. One day I decided to fight back. I picked up a billy club I had hidden on the side of my house and damn near broke his arm when I hit him with it.
He never f**ked with me again.
At least they didn’t shoot her black cat.
OF course O’donnell was left to fight these on her own as the GOP turned its back on her for defeating Castle.
As long as the GOP does nothing the IRS will continue to target Democrat critics.
Sucks when the criminals are in charge.
> Sucks when the criminals are in charge.
Especially when they are pointing their fingers at the good guys and calling THEM anarchists and terrorists when they are engaging in that very behavior themselves.
A bloody nose is in order. But these thugs won’t stop at that. So I think 0bama Care should come down on their lives.
Dr. Dan seems scared and out of place but likes the power and prestigue. They should be holding press conferences on all this corruption. Maybe they are serving as 0’s caddies.
Only if we "volunteer" by trying to board an airplane.
If I heard her right the other day, she claimed the County Executive (New Castle) that filed the phony lien against property she hadn’t owned for a couple of years was the eventual winner in the Senate race.
That should be good enough for a recall, of course ‘they’ will say if they charge the clown that it will deter others from doing their job..
IRS is no different than any other agency or person, THEY will get away with whatever the boss allows.
This particular fish is definitely rotting from the top.
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