Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) :Mr President stop creating jobs at the IRS
january 21,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) issued the following statement tonight after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress:
“As outlined in tonight’s speech, President Obama is pressing hard to continue to advance his ideological agenda at the expense of our economy. The president talks about bringing in ‘more revenue’ and ‘investing’ it. But you and I both know that this is a fancy way of saying he wants to tax you more so he can spend more.
“The answer isn’t higher taxes; it’s about creating more jobs. It’s time for the president to stop creating jobs at the IRS and get out of the way of the job creators in New Jersey and the rest of America. The first step in this process is working with Congress to enact real, meaningful tax reform that will lower rates, simplify the code, and close special-interest loopholes.
“Given the recent election, it’s clear that the American people are eager to get our economy back on track. They want to be rewarded for their hard work and ingenuity, they want to maximize their opportunities so they can get ahead, and they want to forge a better future for themselves and their families. Republicans in the House and Senate are in total agreement with this plan and fully expect the president to help us achieve it.
“Although we are only three weeks into the new Congress, my colleagues and I in the House have already shown that we are serious about working together to make positive changes. We have advanced several bipartisan bills that will allow Americans to find better paying jobs, help American businesses to grow, and put more money back in American taxpayers’ pockets.
“It’s time to put aside partisan politics and advance public policies that help poor and middle class Americans, not those who curry favoritism in Washington. Mr. President, join us.”
By Tom Howell Jr. – The Washington Times – Sunday, January 18, 2015
Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting.
The Affordable Care Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of their household income as their penalty.
Need help filing out your tax return? Don’t call the IRS
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Filing a federal tax return is about to get more complicated for millions of families because of President Barack Obama’s health law. But they shouldn’t expect much help from the Internal Revenue Service.
Got a question for the IRS? Good luck reaching someone by phone. The tax agency says only half of the 100 million people expected to call this year will be able to reach a person.
Callers who do get through may have to wait on hold for 30 minutes or more to talk to someone who will answer only the simplest questions.
“Taxpayers who need help are not getting it, and tax compliance is likely to suffer over the longer term if these problems are not quickly and decisively addressed,” said a report Wednesday by agency watchdog Nina E. Olson.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says budget cuts are forcing the agency to reduce taxpayer services and other functions. The number of audits will decline, technology upgrades will be delayed and the agency might be forced to shut down and furlough workers for two days later this year, Koskinen said.
Tax time brings sobering surprise as health care act’s penalties kick in
JANUARY 10, 2015, 11:58 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2015, 12:03 AM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
First the carrot, now the stick.
Insurance information needed for taxes
For every member of the household included on a tax return, ask:
Did you have health coverage for all of 2014? If not, was there a gap of more than three months? Did you get insurance through the federal marketplace for New Jersey, HealthCare.gov? If yes, watch for an IRS Form 1095-A, which should arrive in the mail by the end of January. It provides information about your estimated income and subsidies, which you will need to reconcile with your actual income to determine whether your subsidies were too low or too high. Those who received subsidies will need to file a Premium Tax Credit form (8962), new this year. If you did not have insurance, or had a gap in coverage longer than three months, consider whether to apply for a hardship exemption. More information, along with detailed instructions for applying for such an exemption, is available at HealthCare.gov.
Important dates
Feb. 15 is the last day to apply on the federal marketplace for New Jersey, HealthCare.gov, for coverage that starts on March 1. April 15 is the deadline for filing federal income taxes.
The Affordable Care Act rolled out last year with the promise of health coverage for those who hadn’t been able to get it before. That was the good part. Now comes the penalty phase: Those who didn’t have health coverage in 2014 will probably owe the Internal Revenue Service money this year.
As tax-filing season opens, Americans are beginning to realize that President Obama’s signature health-reform law was as much about taxes as health insurance. Experts estimate that as many as 30 million Americans — 10 percent of the population – will be affected by the changes it made in the tax code this year.
How that shakes out – how many will pay penalties or be exempted from them, how many will see their tax refunds increased or decreased by the filing day of April 15 — remains to be seen. But as ignorance and confusion give way to surprise at the law’s impact on consumers’ pocketbooks, the political repercussions could be significant.
“I’m afraid this is going to be the third strike,” said Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute. First was the discovery, in the fall of 2013, that those who liked their current insurance coverage wouldn’t necessarily be able to keep it – despite President Obama’s promise to the contrary. Next was the debacle, during the first open-enrollment period, of HealthCare.gov’s computer problems. Now comes the collision of the health law and income taxes.
Tax Foundation : In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (68 million filers) paid 96.7 percent of all income taxes
The Tax Foundation’s annual summary of the latest federal income tax data broken down by income percentile.
This summary is a nicely formatted version of the 2012 data that the IRS released just before the holidays and is available as a PDF and Excel spreadsheet. Each year, this is one of our most popular resources for reporters, lawmakers, tax lawyers, etc.
Here are some of the highlights:
In 2012, 136.1 million taxpayers reported earning $9.04 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.1 trillion in income taxes.
All income groups increased their income and taxes paid over the previous year.
The top 1 percent of taxpayers earned their largest share of income since 2007 at 21.9 percent of total AGI and paid their largest share of the income tax burden since the same year at 38.1 percent of total income taxes.
In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (68 million filers) paid 96.7 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3.3 percent.
The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (38.1 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (122.4 million filers) combined (29.8 percent).
The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a higher effective income tax rate than any other group at 22.8 percent, which is nearly 7 times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.28 percent).
The federal government is cracking down on nonprofit hospitals under ObamaCare in an attempt to prevent harsh collection practices and steep charges for the uninsured.
Newly finalized regulations from the Internal Revenue Service, announced Monday, will require nonprofit hospitals to “take an active role in improving the health of the communities” by making payment methods more fair and making costs more transparent.
For example, nonprofit hospitals are banned from asking for money in patients’ rooms or selling debt to third-party companies unless they make a “reasonable effort” to offer financial assistance. Each hospital must also take steps to improve the health of its community, including a semi-annual evaluation of the area’s “health needs.”
“For hospitals to be tax-exempt, they should be held to a higher standard,” Emily McMahon, a deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury, wrote in a blog post Monday announcing the rules.
DECEMBER 21, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY SCOTT GARRETT
THE RECORD
The code is also unfair, as many of the loopholes target small numbers of high-income individuals, while New Jersey’s middle-class families get stuck with the tab. It should come as no surprise that New Jersey has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation when you figure in the tidal wave of local, state and federal taxes.
Scott Garrett represents the 5th District in the House of Representatives. He serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the House Budget Committee. He is chairman of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises for the House Financial Services Committee, where he oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
ON MAY 1, 1931, with the push of a button at the White House, President Herbert Hoover officially commenced the opening of the Empire State Building. The 103-story structure was built with a powerful combination of steel girders, rivets and American ingenuity. This engineering feat and cultural icon took more than 7 million hours to complete.
There is another labor-intensive, American-made feat that happens every April 15. Unfortunately, we don’t get the productive equivalent of 192 Empire State Buildings for the 1.35 billion man-hours American workers spend filing tax returns each year. Instead, our outdated and complicated tax code rewards us with sluggish economic growth, wasted resources and a whole lot of frustration around the kitchen table.
We must fix our broken tax code and replace the outdated system with a pro-growth tax system, built upon the tenets of simplicity, fairness and efficiency. This is a tall order, but we have a lot at stake here in New Jersey and across the nation.
Currently, the U.S. tax code is the worst of all worlds. First, the system is notoriously complex, with individuals and families spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year trying to solve a numerical riddle of rules, deductions and tax schedules.
The code is also unfair, as many of the loopholes target small numbers of high-income individuals, while New Jersey’s middle-class families get stuck with the tab. It should come as no surprise that New Jersey has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation when you figure in the tidal wave of local, state and federal taxes.
Inefficient tax structure
According to a recent Monmouth University poll, half of New Jerseyans want to eventually leave the state because of the tax burden.
Moreover, the U.S. tax structure is as inefficient as a horse-and-buggy in the age of the high-efficiency hybrid engine. Considerations such as how to legally game the tax code, rather than business fundamentals, often distort individual decisions to work, save and invest. For example, tax economists Seth Giertz and Jacob Feldman argue that the tax code encourages businesses to switch their investments from productive activities (like hiring more workers) toward unproductive ones (like lobbying for special tax preferences).
As a result, not only is our current tax system unfair, but it also wastes resources, slows economic growth and leads to fewer jobs. We need to eliminate the special exemptions, simplify the rates and create a tax code that encourages savings, investment and job creation.
I remain hopeful that President Obama is willing work with Senate and House Republicans to revamp our tax code. Encouragingly, the White House website states “the tax code has become increasingly complicated and unfair. Under today’s tax laws, those who can afford expert advice can avoid paying their fair share and interests with the most connected lobbyists can get exemptions and special treatment written into our tax code.” Mr. President, I couldn’t agree more — now, it’s time to put meaning behind your words.
It is also important to recognize the political hurdles facing tax reform. While Republicans will control both the Senate and House in the New Year, without cooperation from the president, tax reform is as good as dead on arrival.
Serious about tax reform
The president has not yet demonstrated that he is serious about bringing tax reform across the finish line. Instead, the president views the tax code as a political tool to punish industries he happens to support (green energy) and those that don’t fit the party line, such as the oil and gas industry. Rather than talk about a simplified tax code to encourage job creation, the president remains committed to the theory that increasing the overall tax burden on working families in New Jersey somehow means these families are paying their “fair share.”
Most recently, the president threatened to veto a tax deal between the Senate and the House. Here is an example of both houses of Congress working together in a bipartisan manner, and the president killed the deal. For tax reform to work, the American people need a willing partner in the White House.
The American people gave Republicans the responsibility of controlling both houses of Congress for the next two years. In return, we can repay the American people by advancing solutions that help America’s families. And like President Hoover’s dedication of the Empire State Building, hopefully President Obama can work with Republicans to hit the switch and inaugurate another feat of American achievement: a reformed tax code.
The IRS is considering its own temporary shutdown due to recent budget cuts enacted by Congress, its chief said Thursday.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said furloughs — forced unpaid days off for employees as part of an IRS closure — is one idea reluctantly being tossed about to save money, though they are hoping they will not have to go there.
“People call it furloughs; I view it as: Are we going to have to shut the place down? And at this point, that will be the last thing we do, … but there is no way we can say right now that that wont happen,” Koskinen told reporters at a Thursday press conference on the upcoming tax season. “Again, I would stress that would be the last option.”
Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.
The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.
“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.
Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
By SHAILA DEWANOCT. 25, 2014
ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.
The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”
The federal government does.
Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.
WOODWARD: LOTS OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ON OBAMA’S INVOLVEMENT IN IRS SCANDAL
Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz,” Bob Woodward said there are, “lots of unanswered questions,” about the Obama administrations involvement in the IRS scandal surrounding the targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
Woodward said, “The reality now in my view that in the Obama administration, there are lots of unanswered questions about the IRS, particularly. If I were young, I would take Carl Bernstein and move to Cincinnati where that IRS office is and set up headquarters and go talk to everyone.”
A recent editorial declared a victory for Obamacare as evidenced by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey showing a substantial reduction in the number of uninsured New Jersey residents over the past year.
The result, while positive, is not all that surprising given that under the law individuals must purchase coverage or face a financial penalty. In addition, the government doled out taxpayer-funded subsidies and expanded eligibility under Medicaid. I suppose there aren’t too many problems that can’t be solved by throwing money at them — except perhaps deficits.
The result, while positive, is not all that surprising given that under the law individuals must purchase coverage or face a financial penalty. In addition, the government doled out taxpayer-funded subsidies and expanded eligibility under Medicaid. I suppose there aren’t too many problems that can’t be solved by throwing money at them — except perhaps deficits.
The editorial does not report on other effects of Obamacare: cancellation of policies for individuals who had to then purchase new policies at vastly higher premiums, elimination of choice among coverage (Uncle Sam knows what you need), and an overall reduction in the availability and quality of health care.
Recent downward corrections to the enrollment figures due to non-payment of premiums portend even higher premium costs next year unless the administration bails out insurers for their losses with even more taxpayer money. No one disputed the goal of reducing the ranks of the uninsured. The quarrel was always with the approach.
Until this ill-conceived law is repealed, we have to live with its consequences, both intended and unintended. To paraphrase the Greek King Pyrrhus, any more victories like this, and we will be ruined.
Rep Scott Garrett Hits Back on IRS’ Non-Answers
Sep 18, 2014
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Chairman of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, along with six of his colleagues sent a follow-up letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen today after the IRS Commissioner refused to address a number of concerns the Members have about news of the recent IRS dismissal agreement with the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Within 30 days of receiving the letter, the Members requested that the following be provided:
Any communications, from July 1, 2012 to the present, regarding the subject matter of my August 25th letter, including any documents related to, or relevant to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, PARC, or the Johnson Amendment. You should regard relevancy as broadly as federal law permits, including, but not limited, to any internal communications, communications with outside groups, communications with the White House or other executive branch agencies.
Any communications or documents, from August 25th to the present, related to preparing your response to my August 25th, 2014 letter including, but not limited to, any internal communications, communications with outside groups, communications with the White House or other executive branch agencies.
Any communications or documents, from July 1, 2012 to the present, related to the activities of PARC and the 99 religious organizations under investigation that are referenced in your September 5th letter. Where necessary to preserve the confidentiality of the taxpayers under investigation, you may redact confidential taxpayer information or other information that may specifically distinguish the taxpayer. Your response should include all relevant communications and documents including, but not limited to, any internal communications, communications with outside groups, communications with the White House or other executive branch agencies.
Where necessary, to preserve attorney-client privilege, you may redact privileged information and provide a standard privilege log.
Please provide the names and positions of all people who spent any time as part of, or on behalf of, PARC.
Also, a number of previous questions (asked in my August 25th letter) remained un-answered and can be addressed by you, rather than the Department of Justice.
Please provide answers to questions 4, 5 & 6 from our previous letter dated August 25, 2014.
Click here to read the full letter.https://garrett.house.gov/sites/garrett.house.gov/files/20140918%20-%20Letter%20to%20IRS.pdf
Judicial Watch, the conservative group, has landed another batch of emails from the Internal Revenue Service that raise new questions about the possible extent of alleged targeting of conservative groups.
The new documents could help stoke the IRS targeting story again, as lawmakers return to Washington next week.
Perhaps the most intriguing of the new documents shows that IRS officials had some sort of “secret research project” going that related to the donor lists it had collected – inappropriately, as it turned out – from many conservative nonprofit groups.
The IRS demanded the donor lists in the course of reviewing dozens of conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status starting in 2010. An inspector general found in 2013 that the IRS targeted many of those conservative groups for improper scrutiny, including the demands for donor identities. Democrats say some liberal groups eventually were caught up in the net as well.
Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear yet what this “secret research project” concerned. If the project involved the IRS systematically targeting conservative donors for extra scrutiny too – as some GOP lawmakers suspect – that’s a very big deal.
Tea party groups’ lawsuit against IRS over reported extra scrutiny moves forward
By Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press10 hours ago
CINCINNATI (AP) — A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit by 10 tea party groups to move forward against the Internal Revenue Service, rejecting a request by the federal government to dismiss all the allegations that the agency subjected conservative groups to additional, often burdensome scrutiny.
In her ruling Thursday, Judge Susan Dlott allowed two of the tea party groups’ claims — including that the IRS discriminated and retaliated against them based on their views in violation of their free speech rights — to survive to trial.
The Cincinnati-based Dlott did dismiss a third claim, ruling the tea party groups could not pursue allegations of privacy violations on behalf of their individual members. The individuals themselves have to do that, she said.
Edward Greim, the lead attorney for the tea party groups, said Friday he is pleased the case will move forward.
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