Free Republic

Since you’re enjoying your Obamacare health insurance policy so much, you might not be all that put off by a few extra pieces of mail showing up at your door. There’s all those forms to fill out and medical providers to screen, complicated prescription plans and all the rest. But now that the new year is upon us and tax time is approaching, you may want to prepare for an extra surprise from the mailman. It’s coming from the IRS for many of you and it’s not a birthday card.Moe Lane of Red State kicks the tires of this...

MADISON, Wis. — Some of the boldest reforms to public assistance in the nation may arise from the Wisconsin Legislature in coming months. Armed with the largest Assembly majority in 57 years and comfortable control of the state Senate, Republican leadership appears to be putting together the kind of ambitious reform agenda that could rival 2011, when the Republican-led majority introduced and passed a spate of conservative — and controversial — initiatives. On Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, announced the creation of the Public Benefit Reform Committee. While the new committee’s chair or its members have yet to be...

I’m sure glad that all the exposure of the activities of the IRS and Lois Lerner have put an end to using the IRS as a tool to attack administration critics. The crisis clearly is over, citizens. The producer of a new movie that criticizes Obamacare has reportedly become the latest prominent conservative slapped with an IRS audit.Logan Clements, producer of “Sick and Sicker: ObamaCare Canadian Style,” announced via press release Tuesday that he is being audited for the first time ever.The news comes one month after the conservative Breitbart News announced that it, too, was being audited and...

The producer of a new movie that criticizes Obamacare has reportedly become the latest prominent conservative slapped with an IRS audit. Logan Clements, producer of “Sick and Sicker: ObamaCare Canadian Style,” announced via press release Tuesday that he is being audited for the first time ever. “I had never been audited before I made this movie,” he says in a YouTube video. “There seems to be a pattern here.” The news comes one month after the conservative Breitbart News announced that it, too, was being audited and that the action was probably politically motivated. Mr. Clements‘ movie makes the case...

Majority of the Inspectors General find themselves unable to perform their duties to audit the federal government Inspectors General (yes, that’s the plural) are considered watchdogs for the government. Their jobs primarily focus on “uncovering waste, fraud, and mismanagement”, which is an important function to keep government programs and agencies in check. A serious breach of trust is evident, therefore, when 47 of 73 Inspectors General pen a letter to Congress describing “serious limitations on access to records.” That’s 64% of the total watchdogs who express such concerns.

BIG BREAK IN IRS CASE WILL CHANGE SCANDAL’S COURSE New evidence about the actions of the IRS official at the center of the investigation into the agency’s systematic targeting of President Obama’s political adversaries is intensifying the firestorm over the alleged corruption. IRS executive Lois Lerner apparently pushed for an audit of one of the administration’s most outspoken critics in the Senate. In emails with a colleague, Lerner claims to have mistakenly received an invitation to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to give a speech to a non-profit group in 2012. Lerner wrote that the group offered to pay for Grassley’s...

Meet the Deep State. It’s embedded inside a massive remorseless bureaucracy with no conscience or restraint. Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as...

There is “no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” the Internal Revenue Service assured Americans during an internal investigation of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Few will find comfort in those words, and understandably so. Last week, while seeking to reassure Americans he has seen no evidence of a crime, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen acknowledged he had not even bothered to review any of the applicable laws. It seems like only yesterday that President Obama called the scandal “inexcusable” and pledged to work “hand in hand with Congress to get this thing fixed.” More recently, though, he dismissed it as a...

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday evening, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen revealed that a number of taxpayers are confused by his agency’s conduct. Like the IRS, they would also like to claim that corrupted or lost data prevents them from complying with the tax collection agency’s requests with for several-year-old documents. Koskinen told Blitzer that what may come to be known as “The Lerner Defense” is and has been acceptable to the IRS. During Thursday’s interview, an eager Twitter user submitted a question to Blitzer which he helpfully read on the air. “Why shouldn’t tax payers...

Ways and Means investigation uncovers push to audit Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator. According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination. “We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against...

The California Bureau of State Audits set off a scandal on June 1st by disclosing that the State Controller’s Office made accounting misstatements amounting to $31.65 billion.  The timing of the announcement may be devastating to the Democrats who expected to use their super-majority to pass billions of dollars in increased spending, but may now find the net effects of the accounting restatements are a $7 billion General Fund deficit.   California Governor Jerry Brown’s and State Controller John Chiang’s staff refused to go on camera and answer questions as the news broke. To give a perspective on the size of the...

When the IRS was targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for special scrutiny, they demanded the list of donors supporting those groups in 17 cases. Despite assurances from the agency that the lists had been destroyed, a search requested by Congress revealed that at least 3 lists had survived. And of the donors on those lists, fully 10% of the individuals had been audited. The rate of audits for ordinary Americans is about 1%. Now, the House Ways and Means Oversight Committee is demanding that the Government AccoIRS intimidation on a whole other level.untability Office investigate the IRS to...

House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS Tells commissioner to come clean By Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times - Updated: 10:10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday. Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting,...

The Illinois Medicaid program paid an estimated $12 million for medical services for people listed as deceased in other state records, according to an internal state government memo. The memo dated Friday, which The Associated Press obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, says the state auditor compared clients enrolled in the Medicaid database with state death records dating back to 1970. Auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths... Republicans have pressed for the state to use a private company to verify Medicaid eligibility. Maximus Health Services was hired to scrub...

The Internal Revenue Service audits fewer than 1 percent of large business partnerships, according to a government report released Tuesday. That means some of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds and private equity firms are largely escaping close scrutiny by the IRS, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The Government Accountability Office says the number of large businesses organized as partnerships has more than tripled since 2002, yet hardly any get audited. In 2012, only 0.8 percent were subjected to field exams in which agents do a thorough review of books and records. …

The IRS is cash-strapped and audit rates are down, but that doesn’t mean the average Jane or Joe can hide the ball from the tax man. The tax-collecting agency devotes more resources to chasing big fish like convicted tax cheat Wesley Snipes than the average middle-class taxpayer, that’s true. But the IRS is now using sophisticated software and data analysis that puts it in touch with taxpayers before the official audit process begins. “Now with automation and the electronic submission of W-2s and 1099s, the IRS just matches the information,” said David Kautter, managing director of the Kogod Tax Center...

Around this time of the year, all of us start to wonder if this is the year the Internal Revenue Service will come to audit. Most of us don’t have to worry, really, because we are honest and report our incomes accurately and claim only the deductions and tax breaks we deserve. But there are a few who insist on pushing the envelope — or just blunder — and win themselves a communication from the IRS. Some of these mistakes are very common, yet can be very costly.The IRS even has a list of frivolous tax arguments. Here some...

As millions of Americans race to meet Tuesday’s tax deadline, their chances of getting audited are lower than they have been in years. Budget cuts and new responsibilities are straining the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to police tax returns. This year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s. Taxpayer services are suffering, too, with millions of phone calls to the IRS going unanswered. “We keep going after the people who look like the worst of the bad guys,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview. “But there are going...

Following a standing ovation at his address to the standing-room-only crowd, Dr. Ben Carson said that the current state of our government and institutions are "very much like Nazi Germany." Carson says, “You had the government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.” Carson warns that our country is in a precarious position, and that political correctness coupled with government intimidation prevents open and honest dialogue.

The federal government’s changes to school lunch menus have been disastrous, causing problems for cafeterias trying to comply with the rules and leaving the menu so expensive or unpalatable that more than 1 million students have stopped buying lunch, according to a government audit released Thursday. One school district told federal investigators that it had to add unhealthy pudding and potato chips to its menu to meet the government’s minimum calorie requirements. Other school districts removed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from their elementary school menus. Five of the eight school districts surveyed by the Government Accountability Office, the official...