Free Republic

Two things keep the IRS out of most people's hair: the annual gift tax exclusion and the lifetime exclusion. Nerdy takeaways: * A gift tax is a tax owed on the transfer of money or property to another person while receiving nothing or less than full value in return. * The gift giver is the one who generally pays the tax, not the receiver. * If you give more than the annual gift tax limit, you may have to file a gift tax return, but this does not necessarily mean that you'll owe taxes on the gift. * The 2024...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to roll out a free way to file federal taxes, much to the chagrin of tax preparation firm TurboTax. The IRS is launching a pilot plan, known as Direct File, that will offer a free way to submit taxes for U.S. workers. In December, the agency published its plans for an in-house filing system that taxpayers can use to submit their federal tax returns at no cost. Residents of 12 states that meet certain income criteria will be able to try the new service. To qualify, filers need to opt for the standard deduction...

Comedian and radio personality Adam Carolla is apparently a big fan of Sen. Ted Cruz. During a Friday morning interview with the Texas Republican, Carolla approved of the presidential candidate and personally thanked him for wanting to outright abolish the Internal Revenue Service. “Thank you so much for wanting to eliminate the IRS,” Carolla began the conversation. “It’s driving me nuts.” “I think that is a powerful populist issue and today is the day when its on people’s minds,” Cruz said, reminding listeners that Wednesday was Tax Day. Carolla argued that taxes are an important issue that gets overshadowed by...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The IRS commissioner on Tuesday brushed aside GOP proposals to abolish his agency, insisting the U.S. would have to have a tax collector one way or another. “You can call them something other than the IRS if that made you feel better,” the agency’s chief, John Koskinen, said after a speech at the National Press Club. Republicans have heaped even more criticism upon the agency than usual over the last 22 months because of its improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) perhaps has made the most prominent calls to get rid of the IRS. While launching...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz used his appearance at this weekend’s Iowa Freedom Summit to excoriate Obamacare, Islamic State militants and that other evil scourge: the Internal Revenue Service. “The most important tax reform we can do is abolish the IRS,” Cruz said to the delight of attendees at the conservative event. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Turning his aim on Obamacare, the senator said it’s time to “repeal every word” of President Obama’s signature health care legislation. But Cruz saved his harshest critique for Obama’s handling of Islamic State, the terrorist group some refer to by the acronym, ISIS. “What’s happening in Iraq is...

Tax Reform: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, might have hit on the most important fiscal issue facing the U.S.: the need for major tax reform. But he takes it a step further. Speaking Monday, the senator from Texas threw another thunderbolt: Republicans should use their control of Congress to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. "We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer," he told a crowd at a Heritage Foundation event. "And I'll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS."...

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that Republicans should take advantage of their control of Congress to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. “We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer,” he said Monday at Heritage Action’s 2015 conservative policy summit. ”And I’ll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS.” “The last two years have fundamentally changed the dynamics of this debate [on the tax code],” he said. “As we have seen the weaponization of the IRS, as we have seen the Obama administration using the IRS in a...

IRS head touts “efficiencies" but some groups fear fraud.Amid ongoing controversy over its scrutiny of non-profits, the Internal Revenue Service has decided it will no longer screen approximately 80% of the organizations seeking tax-exempt charitable status each year, a change that will ease the creation of small charities while doing away with a review intended to counter fraud and prevent political and other non-charitable groups from misusing the tax code. As of July 1, any group that pays a $400 fee and declares on a three-page online form that it has annual income of less than $50,000, total assets of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Attorney General Eric Holder is challenging Republicans who are calling for his and President Obama's impeachment, and denouncing what he calls a "gridlocked Washington" stalled by what he says is a Republican Party bent on blocking any of the administration's efforts. “For whatever reason, [some] Republicans decided early on that this was a president they were just simply not going to cooperate with,” Holder said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas. "And over the past five-and-a-half years, we have seen demonstrations of that, where the president has reached out his hand, offered compromises that have simply not...

On March 31, 2010, the day before the Inspector General's report says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began its scheme to target tea party and conservative groups, the White House Visitors Log reveals that President Barack Obama met with IRS union boss Colleen Kelley. In a notable feat of investigative journalism, American Spectator reporter Jeffrey Lord exposed what appears to be an unholy alliance among the White House, Democrat members of Congress and the thousands of IRS employees, who are members of the far-left, anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). The NTEU, which supported Obama in 2008 and 2012,...

On Monday, the majority of a panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe attempted to convince themselves of a flawed premise: that the public largely is not convinced that the scandal involving the IRS targeting conservative groups, misleading investigators, and then failing to produce evidence relating to that investigation because they had destroyed it, is that big of a deal. The panel went on to explore an equally flawed premise regarding why the public is not incandescent with rage over this evolving controversy. “People separate the IRS from big government,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson hoped in the form of an assertion....

Multiple illegalities coming to light in the IRS scandal provide a composite sketch of why government is America's oldest, biggest and most pervasive lawbreaker -- with no close second. And, it's getting worse. Government bureaucrats have become America's caste of untouchables. Their arrogance was displayed by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in hearings before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. Koskinen refused to apologize for lost -- or destroyed -- emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials linked to the political targeting of conservatives, and claimed no criminal acts were committed at the IRS. Too many government bureaucrats...

President Obama warned people in Minnesota Friday not to believe what they hear on television: "They're fabricated issues, they're phony scandals that are generated. It's all geared towards the next election or ginning up a base. It's not on the level," the president insisted. Here are his remarks in context: I don't -- I don't watch TV news generally, or cable shows, but I suspect if you're out here and going to work and picking up your kids and taking them to soccer or at night sitting there paying the bills, and you just turn on the TV, sometimes it...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Texas Congressmen Louie Gohmert and Bill Flores introduced legislation that offers a $1 million reward for any individual who can recover former IRS director Lois Lerner’s "lost" emails. An additional $500,000 would be given in exchange for information regarding the destruction of the emails. The Identify and Recover Sent E-mails (IRS) Act (H.R. 4958), if passed, would cut the salaries of IRS employees by 20 percent until the emails are recovered. Flores told Breitbart Texas that he was inspired to take action after groups in his district were unfairly targeted by the IRS. "A Tea Party group in my district...

A veteran IT professional tells TheBlaze that the IRS’ claim that the agency lost two years’ worth of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s emails is “simply not feasible.” On Friday, members of Congress revealed that the IRS would not be able to hand over Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS employees from January 2009 to April 2011, possibly due to a “glitch” or “crash.” Lawmakers were seeking the emails as part of their investigation into the IRS targeting scandal. Norman Cillo, an Army veteran who worked in intelligence and a former program manager at Microsoft, argued it is very...

FBI Director James Comey was back before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and had few answers to offer a passionate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the ongoing IRS investigation. Cruz began his line of questioning with a focus on what he called the “persistent stonewalling from the administration on this matter.” “It has been 372 days, just over a year, since President Obama and Attorney General Holder both publicly stated that they were outraged at the IRS‘ improper targeting of conservative groups and individuals,” he said. “And yet, despite the passage of time, very little has happened.” But...

On special edition of MSNBC's PoliticsNation on Monday in which a panel of MSNBC regulars selected awards for the year 2013, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid asserted that the "Knockout Game" was the "most overrated story of the year," as she complained that conservatives "went absolutely ballistic" and "wanted[ed] to stoke issues of race." MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams then brought up the IRS scandal in which conservative organizations were given closer scrutiny before the 2012 elections, with Williams charging, "Ain't nothing there. Never was, never will be," and with fellow panel member Krystal Ball chiming in that "It's not even a...

Thankfully, she’ll no longer be in a position to affect policy as a government employee. Unfortunately, she’ll likely soon be back in a position to affect policy as a government lobbyist, making several times the salary she made before. Taxpayers will remember her fondly as someone who, when asked for her help in uncovering potential IRS malfeasance against the president’s political enemies, clammed up and refused to cooperate for fear of incriminating herself. Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency’s tea party scandal, is retiring, the agency confirmed Monday. Lerner headed the IRS division...

Shady former IRS official Lois Lerner has been the prime operative of one of the biggest IRS scandals in history. Lerner purposely targeted Tea Parties across the country as well as other conservative groups. The IRS Scandal involves: •At least 292 conservative groups targeted •At least 5 pro-Israel groups targeted •Constitutional groups targeted •Groups that criticized Obama administration were targeted •At least two pro-life groups targeted •A Texas voting-rights group was targeted •Conservative activists and businesses were targeted •At least 88 IRS agents were involved in the targeting scandal •At least one conservative Hispanic group was targeted •IRS continued to...

Scandals: One of the nation's largest veterans groups is being required to provide proof of membership eligibility. Posts that can't or won't comply face heavy fines. Your government thanks you for your service. The IRS scandal, which President Obama says is "phony," along with the body-bag scandals of Benghazi and Fast and Furious, was once the object of faux presidential scorn. When the president announced acting Commissioner Steven Miller had resigned over his agency's "inexcusable" targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status, he feigned concern. "I reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog's report and...