Free Republic

The Senate on Sunday passed the Democrats’ sweeping economic package that would allocate billions of taxpayer dollars to facilitate the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service’s workforce. The IRS would receive $80 billion if H.R. 5376, the $750 billion “Inflation Reduction Act” passes the House and lands on Biden’s desk. The funding would mark a 600 percent increase from 2021 when the bureau received $12.6 billion. The reconciliation package would also double the current IRS workforce by hiring an additional 87,000 employees to the bureau’s staff of 78,661 employees, a move that would make the IRS larger than the Pentagon,...

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” -Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Just how bad is the Biden administration and Democrat Congress's grossly misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" of 2022? The Wall Street Journal has a shocking lead editorial titled "The IRS is About to Go Beast Mode" about the particulars of its $80 billion expansion of the IRS, which is six times the size of the tax agency's current $12.6 billion budget: The $80 billion is more than six times the current annual IRS budget of $12.6 billion. The money will be...

"Imagine my surprise when I found a pile of IRS 1040 tax returns among the tons of trash at a “lay-up site” used by illegal border jumpers near the Mexican border west of Douglas, Arizona. There are dozens of such places where the thousands of border invaders change clothes, discard trash and wait to be taken by their “coyote” to their pick-up location for moving on to Phoenix or El Paso or Houston. The IRS 1040 forms were filled out and had been used. Hey, who says illegal aliens don’t pay taxes? I collected the 1040 forms and we noticed...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will herd uninsured Americans into Obamacare plans this fall by targeting young adults and working with the IRS to root out people who paid a penalty for lacking coverage last year. Officials said people who were fined under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate can expect to receive a paper notice that explains their coverage options on the law’s web-based exchanges. The state of Massachusetts is already working with its revenue agency to locate the uninsured, and the Obama administration said those efforts appeared to be working. The Health and Human Services Department said...

The Inspector General for the IRS said Thursday that the tax collection agency continues to be at risk of paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent Earned Income Tax Credit payments each year, and that there's nothing the IRS can do about it. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report that said almost 25 percent of EITC payments issued last year should not have been issued. That amounts to $15.6 billion in payments under a program that's meant to boost low and moderate-income people and families.

In June 2014, the IRS seized $153,907.99 from Ken Quran's bank account - his life savings - even though he did nothing wrong. . . the IRS may seize a person's bank assets if it discovers a pattern of frequent transactions under $10,000. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10,000 and it's a crime if one tries to avoid that reporting by purposefully keeping all transactions below that amount. The laws are intended to suss out drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime or terrorist activity. But the IRS doesn't need any evidence of wrongdoing before seizing the...

I consistently state our government is too big and it cannot handle all the responsibilities it continues to take on itself. President Obama has stated we, the American citizens, keep asking the federal government to do more. Even if you believed that, he could Just Say No. After you read this you will understand why. My friend Steve received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It stated that the five-figure amount of money he had overpaid on his 2014 tax return and had asked to be applied to his 2015 return was being confiscated for child support payments...

WASHINGTON--The Internal Revenue Service said identity thieves’ penetration of one of its computer databases was much more extensive than previously reported, with more than 300,000 taxpayer accounts potentially affected and more than 600,000 breaches attempted.

Randy Sowers built his dairy farm over three decades into a thriving business. After kick-starting with a $100,000 loan, today the South Mountain Creamery has 1,000 cows and 70 employees delivering milk, ice cream and other products to homes in the Washington, D.C., area.

The Internal Revenue Service has seized the bank accounts of hundreds of innocent business owners. Using the powers granted under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, which was designed to help federal agencies catch drug dealers, terrorists and other criminals, the IRS has been legally seizing the bank accounts of law-abiding business owners who have consistently made cash bank deposits less than the federal bank reporting minimum of $10,000. The New York Times reported that hundreds of these cash-only business had their entire bank accounts seized by the IRS in the past few years because the agency is...

IRS: As the 2014 midterms approach, what has become a political arm of the Obama administration has targeted — as it targeted the Tea Party — a leading conservative truth-teller that has exposed so many of its lies. Even as the IRS races to cover up a prior abuse of power, it ruthlessly engages in another, using its power to tax in an attempt to destroy the vast truth-gathering enterprise launched by the late Andrew Breitbart, which the administration apparently ranks right alongside the Tea Party atop its enemies list. Last Friday, the IRS stretched credulity beyond the breaking point...

In responding to a question from the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said he and his department follow the law “wherever we can.” (Video) House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) asked Koskinen “Will you be following the law,” in collecting money for a certain type of healthcare subsidy. After Koskinen ducked the question, Brady asked again. Koskinen then admitted: “Yes, wherever we can, we follow the law.” A discouraged Brady chuckled while admonishing the commissioner saying, “I encourage you to follow the law in all instances.” I’m sure

During another grueling hearing on the ObamaCare rollout, the head of the Internal Revenue Service tried to offer lawmakers an assurance about the soon-to-open enrollment period. “Whenever we can, we follow the law,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways and Means subcommittee on health on Wednesday. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who leads the subcommittee, immediately expressed his concern with the remarks. “I encourage you to follow the law in all instances,” Brady said. Koskinen, who was confirmed as head of IRS last December, has repeatedly faced lawmakers' ire over the agency's targeting of conservative groups. Lawmakers spent a...

The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated. Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.

There will be a tax preparer certification program after all. That was the word from Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen. If you’re scratching your head after Loving v. Commissioner and wondering how that’s possible, here’s your answer: the program will be voluntary. Following losses at the lower court and the appellate court which held that IRS did not have the authority to regulate preparers, the IRS dropped the matter. For the 2014 tax season, tax preparers were required to have a preparer tax identification number (PTIN) but were not required to engage in testing or continuing education requirements; similarly,...

Since I’m a public finance economist, I realize I’m supposed to focus on big-picture issues such as tax reform and entitlement reform. And I do beat those issues to death, so I obviously care about controlling the size and power of government. But I like to think I’m also a decent human being. And this is why I get even more agitated when politicians and bureaucrats engage in thuggish behavior against comparatively powerless citizens. Some of the worst examples of government thuggery are the result of “asset forfeiture,” which happens when governments confiscate the property of people who haven’t been...

May 8, 2014 3:23 PM IRS to Turn Over All Lerner E-Mails By Eliana Johnson Less than 24-hours after the House voted to hold disgraced Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, the agency agreed to turn over all of Lerner’s e-mail and correspondence to a House panel investigating its targeting of conservative non-profit groups. “While it is good that we are finally getting these emails, it should never have taken this long,” Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp said in a statement, arguing that the e-mails are critical to his investigation. “The Committee will thoroughly...

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,...

Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, concerned about the armed agents that surrounded Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s property, introduced a bill to cut funding for any “paramilitary units” that work for the Bureau of Land Management, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal regulatory agencies. “There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team,” he said on the House floor on Tuesday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. “They’re regulatory agencies. They’re not paramilitary units, and I think that concerns a lot of us.”