Free Republic

It seems like only yesterday that IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was claiming she knew nothing about the dastardly work of those shadowy "low-level employees in the Cincinnati office" - who somehow remain shadowy to this day, despite having been blamed for the worst abuse-of-power scandal in living memory. The Incompetence Defense beloved of this administration, and so effective with a media that would never accept it from a Republican official, was deployed with gusto. Lerner was shocked, shocked, to discover gambling against Tea Party groups going on at Rick's Tax Exempt Organizations Cafe American. But now National...

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. ... Ingram ... is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office...

The rabbit hole is getting ever deeper for the embattled IRS. Last Friday, Lois Lerner of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division, issued an apology for the targeting of conservative groups in the screening process for 501c(4) tax-exempt status. She also claimed then that only low-level employees in a Cincinnati office had been guilty of singling out groups containing the words “tea party” or “patriot.” However, a report reviewed by both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters has indicated that the questions of who initiated the practice and how the conservative groups were targeted are more complicated than previously thought. The report...

A timeline of Internal Revenue Service activities that was developed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and provided to congressional staff indicates that early last year—as the nation was headed toward a presidential election—the IRS issued a “be on the lookout order” (BOLO) for officials in its “Determinations Unit” to ferret out for heightened scrutiny organizations applying for tax exempt status that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” The inspector general’s timeline indicates that as early as March 2010 the IRS’ “Determinations Unit” had begun targeting for special scrutiny organizations that used...

Who Is Byron Dorgan? By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Published 12/15/2005 12:07:04 AM WASHINGTON -- All's well, Senator Byron Dorgan of the great state of North Dakota has done come clean. Senator Dorgan is the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. In that capacity he accepted $67,000 in contributions from Indian tribes represented by the recently indicted Jack Abramoff, a fabulous fixer here in the capital of the Free World. Abramoff, a Republican, has obviously been an equal-opportunity fixer, and apparently Dorgan was not above accepting his help, though Dorgan claims he never met the rogue and never backed...

<p>The Internal Revenue Service fired 71 employees between July 1998 and September 2002 for misconduct under a provision of a 1998 IRS reform law, a new report said.</p> <p>The General Accounting Office report said the IRS or the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration completed investigations on 3,512 allegations and substantiated 419 as violations, resulting in 71 IRS employees being fired. Among the violations were failures to file tax returns on time and failures to state tax liability accurately. Remedies in other cases included penalties and employees leaving the IRS, the GAO said.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has ruled the Internal Revenue Service committed fraud and acted deceptively after giving secret deals to two pilots in return for their testimony against 1,300 pilots who bought into the same tax shelters. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday overturned a previous ruling against the pilots who were found guilty of tax evasion and were ordered to pay more than $2 billion in penalties. To remedy the IRS misconduct, the court ordered that all the pilots should receive the same deal that one of the pilots received. As part of...