Tag: IRS Targeting

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New Emails Show Lois Lerner Was in Contact With DOJ About Prosecuting Tax Exempt Groups

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New Emails Show Lois Lerner Was in Contact With DOJ About Prosecuting Tax Exempt Groups

Katie Pavlich | Apr 16, 2014

According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for “lying” about political activity.

“I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS,” Lerner wrote in a May 8, 2013 email to former Nikole C. Flax, who was former-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller’s chief of staff.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/04/16/breaking-new-emails-show-lois-lerner-contacted-doj-about-prosecuting-tax-exempt-groups-n1825292?utm_source=TopBreakingNewsCarousel&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingNewsCarousel

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IRS chief: New rule on the way for tax-exempt groups

John Koskinen

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen

IRS chief: New rule on the way for tax-exempt groups

WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule regulating the political activities of non-profit groups to address complaints from the right and left that it goes too far, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Monday.

“In all likelihood we will re-propose a redefined rule and ask for more public comment,” Koskinen told USA TODAY’s Capital Download. It’s a process he predicts will take “until the end of the year and beyond” to complete. The proposed regulation of groups known as 501(c)(4)s drew a record 150,000 comments before the deadline in late February.

He said the new rule would take into account backlash from conservative Tea Party groups as well as some liberal advocacy organizations that the agency’s proposal – intended to address concerns that the tax-exempt groups were engaged in partisan warfare – would bar, even voter education and registration programs.

He was interviewed on the eve of Tax Day, the April 15 deadline for Americans to file their returns.

“I think we have to take all of that into consideration,” Koskinen told the weekly video newsmaker series. “There are very thoughtful comments and concerns, and one of the questions that has evoked a lot of comment is, once you define what political activity is, to what organizations should it apply in the 501(c) context and how much of it should be allowed? All of that is going to be very important.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/14/irs-commissioner-john-koskinen/7701609/

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IRS Employees Brazenly Campaigned For Obama And Your Tax Money Paid For It!

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IRS Employees Brazenly Campaigned For Obama And Your Tax Money Paid For It!

IRS employees are being investigated for actually actively campaigning for Obama and other Democrats while on government time to taxpayers seeking information on how to pay their taxes. Amazingly, we’re supposed to still believe that there is no basis for the accusations of IRS targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups.

From the Washington Times:

In one case the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees who conduct politics on government time, said it was “commonplace” in a Dallas IRS office for employees to have pro-Obama screensavers on their computers, and to have campaign-style buttons and stickers at their office.

In another case, a worker at the tax agency’s customer help line urged taxpayers “to re-elect President Obama in 2012 by repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,” the Office of Special Counsel said in a statement.

…Another IRS employee in Kentucky has agreed to serve a 14-day suspension for blasting Republicans in a conversation with a taxpayer.

“They’re going to take women back 40 years,” the IRS employee said in a conversation that was recorded. The employee also said that “if you vote for a Republican, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer.”

That employee went on to tell the taxpayer she knew she wasn’t supposed to be voicing her political opinions, and asked the taxpayer not to say anything.

What kind of government office is run so poorly that the employees felt they had absolute carte blanche to rant to taxpayers about voting for Obama? This is an absolute disgrace and all Americans should be offended by this, but how many on the left will even hear about this or care to comment?

https://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/128186-irs-employees-campaigned-for-obama-and-your-tax-money-paid-for-it/

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IRS agrees to hand over Lerner emails

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IRS agrees to hand over Lerner emails
By Bernie Becker

The IRS has agreed to turn over emails and other documents from Lois Lerner, a key player in the agency’s targeting controversy, the House Ways and Means Committee said Friday.

Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) threatened last month to subpoena those documents after criticizing the IRS for failing to comply with his request.

“This is a significant step forward and will help us complete our investigation into the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups,” Camp said in a statement.

https://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/200193-irs-agrees-to-turn-over-lerner-documents

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8 Election Experts Slam IRS for Interfering with Campaign Finance

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8 Election Experts Slam IRS for Interfering with Campaign Finance
Ken McIntyre
February 27, 2014 at 4:54 pm

Eight former members of the Federal Election Commission today accused the Internal Revenue Service of attempting to “interfere” with campaign finance regulations enacted by Congress, The Foundry has learned.

The former FEC commissioners signed a letter filed this afternoon as a public comment on the IRS’s proposed new rules on so-called “candidate-related political activity” by nonprofit advocacy organizations qualified as tax-exempt under federal law. Midnight is the deadline for public comment on the proposed rules, which critics say the IRS developed secretly and announced at Thanksgiving to silence some free speech – seven months after the IRS targeting scandal broke.

Signing the letter to the IRS were Lee Ann Elliott, Thomas J. Josefiak, David M. Mason, Don McGahn, Bradley A. Smith, Michael E. Toner, Hans A. von Spakovsky and Darryl Wold.  McGahn, the most recent member of the FEC, stepped down last year.

Among them, the former commissioners have 55 years of experience in campaign finance regulation, said von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who also manages the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. He said:

“The proposed rules would severely restrict the First Amendment-protected political activity of nonprofit advocacy organizations. It seems obvious that this is the second stage in the Obama Administration’s attempt to silence its critics – first they targeted Tea Party and other conservative organizations to delay their IRS applications for tax-exempt status, and now they are changing the rules to make it almost impossible for them to operate.”

Americans may register their comments with the IRS through the website NonProfitFreedom.org – a project of the Center for Competitive Politics in Alexandria, Va., which Smith heads.

Smith, FEC chairman from 2000 to 2005, told The Foundry:

”The IRS needs to recognize the dangers of embroiling itself in the political process.  It just is not equipped to regulate in an area far removed from revenue collection, and that Congress specifically entrusted to the bipartisan Federal Election Commission.  If the proposed rules are any indication, the agency is already far out of its depth.”

The proposed changes would affect Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which covers nonprofit groups ranging from the Sierra Club on the left to the National Rifle Association on the right. In their letter, Smith, von Spakovsky and the six other former FEC members argue that the IRS lacks the statutory authority to restrict the political activity of such organizations and that the proposed rules do not “respect Supreme Court precedent.”

The commissioners also say the proposed rules would “confuse regulated entities” and “seriously undermine the First Amendment rights and protections of the Constitution.”  They point out the “inappropriateness” of the IRS’s proposing “a regulatory scheme almost identical to a provision of federal campaign finance law that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional”  in the Citizens United decision.

The IRS’s actions are “arbitrary and capricious,” they conclude, and the proposed rules “should be withdrawn.”

Midnight is the deadline for public comments on the “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.”  As of earlier today, almost 100,000 comments had been filed, indicating that the response may break a record for the IRS.

Von Spakovsky said a quick review of the comments indicates that the public tide is running strongly against the IRS on the rules.

Some in Congress also have criticized the rules change –Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), and other congressional leaders sent a letter of protest Feb. 5 to the IRS.  They wrote that the rules “target the First Amendment rights” of grassroots groups and appear “calculated to take effect just in time for the mid-term elections.”

By a 243-176 vote, the House on Wednesday approved a bill that would delay the rules for a year. , Senate Democrats are expected to prevent the bill, sponsored by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI), from coming to a vote.  The White House has threatened a veto.

This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.

https://blog.heritage.org/2014/02/27/foundry-exclusive-8-election-experts-slam-irs-interfering-campaign-finance/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

 

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IRS TARGETING: Emails Prove Lerner Helped Craft New IRS Crackdown Rules, Nets Censor

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IRS TARGETING: Emails Prove Lerner Helped Craft New IRS Crackdown Rules, Nets Censor

By Geoffrey Dickens | February 6, 2014 | 15:55

On Wednesday the House Ways and Means Committee released new emails proving that former IRS executive Lois Lerner secretly helped craft, with Treasury officials, new rules that would make it easier to crack down on conservative groups like the Tea Party. These new rules were being written in 2012, at the height of the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party.

So far the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have yet to mention this latest IRS scandal bombshell on their evening or morning shows.

On February 5 Patrick Howley reported the following:

The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules “off-plan,” meaning that their plans would not be published on the public schedule. They planned the new rules in 2012, while the IRS targeting of conservative groups was in full swing, and not after the scandal broke in order to clarify regulations as the administration has suggested.

The rules place would place much more stringent controls on what would be considered political activity by the IRS, effectively limiting the standard practices of a wide array of non-profit groups.

Read more: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2014/02/06/emails-prove-lerner-helped-craft-new-irs-crackdown-rules-nets-cens#ixzz2uWhXwgMZ

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Email: IRS’s Lerner, Treasury Department secretly drafted new rules to restrict nonprofits

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Email: IRS’s Lerner, Treasury Department secretly drafted new rules to restrict nonprofits

The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules “off-plan,” meaning that their plans would not be published on the public schedule. They planned the new rules in 2012, while the IRS targeting of conservative groups was in full swing, and not after the scandal broke in order to clarify regulations as the administration has suggested.

The rules place would place much more stringent controls on what would be considered political activity by the IRS, effectively limiting the standard practices of a wide array of non-profit groups.

Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2014/02/05/email-irss-lerner-treasury-department-secretly-drafted-new-rules-to-restrict-nonprofits/#ixzz2sUvhR9eR

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Mitch McConnell: Obama, IRS Fight to Keep Conservative Nonprofits from Forming

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Mitch McConnell: Obama, IRS Fight to Keep Conservative Nonprofits from Forming

by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 30 Jan 2014 406 post a comment

James Madison had it exactly right.

Referring to infringements on our freedoms, the Father of the Bill of Rights once wrote that such encroachments were more often “gradual and silent” than “violent and sudden.”

That’s exactly what we’re seeing with President Obama’s proposed regulation on so-called 501(c)(4) groups: a stealth attempt to stifle the ability of ordinary Americans to participate in the political process.

The administration’s proposal, quietly floated over Thanksgiving, is just the latest in a long line of attempts to skirt the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, which basically said that businesses and independent groups have the same right to free speech under the First Amendment as anybody else.

https://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/30/Exclusive-Mitch-McConnell-Obama-Attempts-to-Prevent-Conservative-Nonprofits-from-Forming

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Leaning Right in Hollywood, Under a Lens

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Leaning Right in Hollywood, Under a Lens
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and NICHOLAS CONFESSOREJAN. 22, 2014

LOS ANGELES — In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds.

A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum.

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/us/politics/leaning-right-in-hollywood-under-a-lens.html?_r=0

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Will IRS bully people to sign up for Obamacare?

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Will IRS bully people to sign up for Obamacare?
BY: Byron York January 13, 2014 | 5:25 pm | Modified: January 13, 2014 at 6:26 pm

The individual mandate, Obamacare’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance that includes “minimum essential coverage,” has been in effect for two weeks now. No one has noticed because nothing has happened. But it will.

The mandate is the heart of Obamacare; without it, supporters believe, the system won’t work. So the Obama administration hopes millions of Americans will voluntarily comply with the mandate and purchase government-approved coverage. If they don’t do it voluntarily, they’ll be punished.

Starting next year, the government will collect a penalty — the administration calls it a “shared responsibility payment” — from Americans who don’t go along with the Obamacare edict. The penalty starts small — just $95 per adult and $47.50 per child this year — but could conceivably reach thousands of dollars per family per year once the fee scale is fully in effect.

The threat of coercion lies behind the entire Obamacare scheme. The question for the coming year is, how coercive will the government be?

The Democrats who wrote the Affordable Care Act in 2009 gave the Internal Revenue Service power to collect Obamacare penalties. Many Americans are quite familiar with how coercive the IRS can be. Fearing public opposition to IRS threats, the law’s authors forbade the IRS from bringing criminal charges or seizing houses and property from those who don’t buy government-defined “minimum essential coverage.” But Democrats still gave the IRS significant authority.

“Although the Act provides that the IRS may not use criminal prosecutions, notices of federal tax liens, or levies on property to collect an unpaid penalty, the IRS may employ offsets against federal tax refunds,” the Obama administration wrote in its 2012 Supreme Court brief in defense of the mandate. “The IRS also may seek payment through correspondence or phone calls from IRS employees.”

The main leverage the IRS will have is the refund “offset.” That simply means if a taxpayer is due a refund, but has also incurred an Obamacare penalty, the penalty will be subtracted from the refund. So a taxpayer who has a $500 refund coming but incurs a $695 Obamacare penalty will receive no refund.

In addition, that taxpayer might face a letter and a phone call — or a series of them — from the IRS telling him to pay the rest. Anyone who has received a letter or phone call from the IRS knows the experience can be quite intimidating. Or, in the words of the administration’s Supreme Court brief: “Offsets, correspondence, and phone calls are consistently some of the most productive tools in the federal tax collection process.”

https://m.washingtonexaminer.com/will-irs-bully-people-to-sign-up-for-obamacare/article/2542102