Free Republic

Scandal: The IRS canceled a contract with an email storage contractor weeks after Lois Lerner reported lost personal files and before other IRS officials had their hard drives crash as Tea Party-targeting investigations began. Timing is everything, the saying goes, and sometimes the timing of events is also very curious, as in the case of the lost emails of Lerner and at least six other officials at the very same time the IRS canceled its contract to back up and preserve those emails as required by federal law. Lerner's computer supposedly crashed in June 2011, an alleged event the IRS...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that taxpayers have a right to challenge an Internal Revenue Service summons enforcement action in court when they can show the tax agency might have issued the summons in bad faith. The tax-collecting IRS argued taxpayers already have opportunities to challenge a summons, but the nine justices ruled in favor of a Florida man who demanded an evidentiary hearing about the motives of IRS officials for issuing a summons.

SNIP... O'Brien publicist Drew Shane issued a statement saying O'Brien had been unaware he owed back taxes. He blamed the problem on a clerical error that prevented the bill from reaching O'Brien's accountant in Los Angeles. SNIP...

A statement released from the office of Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, says what’s good for the government should be good for taxpayers. So there might come a time in the future when a letter starting out, “Dear IRS, The dog ate my tax receipts,” would be a perfectly acceptable response to a government inquiry about those “health cost” deductions for a hot tub and the trips to the Bahamas. The word came from Stockman’s office on Friday after a contentious hearing in Congress where the chief of the IRS said there was no apology due for the agency’s loss of...

Scandal: One of the seven people, including Lois Lerner who lost emails from the period of Tea Party targeting by the IRS, served as chief of staff to former IRS head Steven Miller. She also made 35 visits to the White House. The funny thing about emails is that they are never orphans. When you send one, there's always a recipient who has his or her own copy. The "lost" Lois Lerner emails had recipients. How about subpoenas to all of them during the Tea Party targeting period? That should help find what we need to know — or maybe...

Over 150 million Americans are on some form of government assistance So raise the number of dependents on your W-4 to 150,000,000 and take a Tax Holiday in 2014, 2015 & 2016

The federal Highway Trust Fund, historically, is a fund that the government can’t be trusted to spend on federal highways. Unfortunately, Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) is proposing to put more money in it by raising the federal gasoline tax, a proposal he’s concocted with Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.). Corker’s idea is bad policy and bad politics. The politics: Gas prices are rising rapidly, taxes on fuel are regressive, and Americans, rightly, really don’t like when you raise any kind of tax at all. There’s no pressing policy reason to increase the tax. The trust fund has plenty of...

Connecticut residents may soon be seeing more federal tax hikes in the gas and diesel purchased, the first hike in 20 years. Lawmakers in Washington, DC said the federal highway trust fund will be empty in a few months if they don't come up with a plan to refill it. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker proposed raising the federal tax $0.12 over the next two years to replenish the fund, however, taxpayers aren't approving of this. "That's not going to work for me. I'm a single parent, I can't afford that," said Latoya Leery. Connecticut drivers...

Two U.S. senators on Wednesday proposed raising federal gasoline and diesel fuel taxes by 12 cents a gallon [3.2 cents a liter] over the next two years to keep a road and bridge fund from going broke. The gasoline tax now stands at 18.4 cents a gallon, and the diesel tax at 24.4 cents a gallon. The politically sensitive levies have not been increased since 1993. The senators' plan faces an uphill fight this year, with congressional elections coming in November. Senators Bob Corker, a Republican, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat, called for the tax increase, with the new revenue...

Two senators unveiled a bipartisan plan Wednesday to raise federal gasoline and diesel taxes for the first time in more than two decades, pitching the proposal as a solution to Congress' struggle to pay for highway and transit programs. The plan offered by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would raise the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gas tax and 24.4-cents-a- gallon diesel tax by 12 cents each over the next two years, and then index the taxes to keep pace with inflation. The plan also calls for offsetting the tax increases with other taxes cuts. Senators said that could be...

The federal government is shelling out $264 a month, on average, for people who qualify for premium subsidies on the Obamacare federal exchange. That leaves the subsidy-eligible with an average bill of $82 a month for health insurance after the hefty credits, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Scandal: In testimony last March, the IRS chief told Congress that the now-allegedly irretrievable emails were not immediately available because they were safely stored offline. Maybe the NSA can help find them? Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify June 23 about Lois Lerner's suddenly lost emails. One of the topics is expected to be his prior contradictory congressional testimony. Koskinen testified about the emails at an Oversight hearing in March and, as investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson notes, gave quite the opposite impression from the current storyline that has every computer nerd in...

Scandal: The IRS descends into criminal enterprise, with word of a 26-month gap of lost emails from the very period it was illegally targeting Tea Party groups. Computer crash? Try obstruction of justice. Just as the claim that President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, inadvertently hit the "erase" button instead of "pause" gave impetus to the drive to impeach Nixon, so too should the IRS announcement that it can't find two years of Lois Lerner's emails lead to a criminal investigation of this administration and creation of a select committee. In April we wrote, "Lois Lerner Should Go To Jail."...

Corruption: A House panel votes this week to formally ask the DOJ to pursue criminal charges against former IRS employee Lois Lerner. It is time someone in this administration were held accountable for something. A staff report by House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa reveals testimony by IRS agents that the IRS has not deliberately targeted progressive groups. Now comes word that the House Ways and Means Committee is sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder accusing former IRS director of tax-exempt organizations Lois Lerner of committing at least three crimes in the IRS's targeting tea party and other...

New emails show that the woman at the center of the IRS scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status targeted tea party applications specifically and directed they be held up. While a possible "wag the dog" attack on Syria and other "phony" scandals like Benghazi have grabbed the headlines, Congress has continued its investigation into the Obama administration's targeting of tea party groups that sprang up in opposition to ObamaCare by the agency charged with enforcing it, the Internal Revenue Service. [snip] In the February 2011 email, Lerner advised her staff — including then-Exempt Organizations Technical...

The Internal Revenue Service is about to get slapped with a harsh payback for messing around with conservative groups, blowing wads of tax dollars on employee conferences and helping implement Obamacare. The House Appropriations Committee is set to OK an IRS budget of $10.9 billion, $1.5 billion under President Obama's request for fiscal year 2015, reducing the agency's budget to 2008 levels. ... The agency has always felt GOP fire, but the controversies over probing Tea Party and conservative groups, lavish spending on conventions and bonuses and a new push to re-evaluate the tax exempt status of political groups has...

Last August, I shared a list of companies that “re-domiciled” in other nations so they could escape America’s punitive “worldwide” tax system. This past April, I augmented that list with some commentary about whether Walgreen’s might become a Swiss-based company. And in May, I pontificated about Pfizer’s effort to re-domicile in the United Kingdom. Well, to paraphrase what Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential debate, here we go again. Here’s the opening few sentences from a report in the Wall Street Journal. Medtronic Inc.’s agreement on Sunday to buy rival medical-device maker Covidien COV PLC for...

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-17/wealthy-clintons-use-trusts-to-limit-estate-tax-they-back.html

Is Medtronic's massive international corporate merger a billion-dollar tax dodge, an indictment of the U.S. tax code or a business-savvy work-around that could spur investment and growth in the Twin Cities? The answer depends on whom you ask. The $42.9 billion cash-and-stock purchase of Covidien, which was announced Sunday, comes with plans for Medtronic to decamp its executive suite to Ireland, where Covidien is based. It also will nearly double the size of the Fridley-based medical device maker and likely result in no significant change in its 8,000-strong Twin Cities workforce. The company is talking about adding 1,000 workers locally....

The 2013 legislative session saw a strong trend of states cutting various taxes, as 18 states passed net tax cuts into law. When one-third of the country cuts taxes, it is clear economic growth is a top priority for states digging out of a dismal economy. The cuts range from a nearly complete overhaul of a state’s tax code to a few small changes. North Carolina enacted the year’s biggest tax cut as part of a comprehensive reform package. The measures will be phased in over a period of several years, with taxes cut by $500 million during the first...