WaPo: IRS apologizes for inappropriately targeting conservative political groups in 2012 election

[Larry]

This sort of made me laugh.... what about this is breaking?

the official report

Which was leaked, including this stunning news, a few days back.

---------- Post added May-14th-2013 at 07:12 PM ----------

Two Yahoo articles about the issue.

Yahoo: Justice to investigate IRS targeting of tea party.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is investigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

Holder said the FBI will investigate to see if any laws were broken. He said he ordered the criminal investigation Friday — the day the IRS publicly acknowledged that it had singled out conservative groups.

"Those (actions) were, I think, as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable," Holder said. "But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."

Numerous congressional committees already are investigating the IRS for singling out tea party and other conservative groups during the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. But Holder's announcement takes the matter to another level, if investigators are able to prove that laws were broken.

Holder said he wasn't sure which laws may have been broken.

It's a really long article. (And I'll admit I've only skimmed it.) But it mentions a few allegations that I haven't seen before.

----------

Yahoo: How your tea party group got added to the IRS’ ‘Be On the Look Out’ list

Much shorter article. In fact, here's the entire thing:

This screen shot is taken from an official review of the Internal Revenue Service's practices for determining which groups were eligible for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.

The report, written by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and obtained by Yahoo News on Tuesday, details missteps the IRS took in targeting certain political groups for additional scrutiny.

The audit confirms previous reports that the IRS flagged applications from organizations that used words like "tea party" and "patriots" in their title. Even groups that said they wanted to advocate for making "America a better place to live" were placed on a "Be On the Look Out," or BOLO, list.

From the report:

In May 2010, the Determinations Unit began developing a spreadsheet that would become known as the “Be On the Look Out” listing (hereafter referred to as the BOLO listing), which included the emerging issue of Tea Party applications. In June 2010, the Determinations Unit began training its specialists on issues to be aware of, including Tea Party cases. By July 2010, Determinations Unit management stated that it had requested its specialists to be on the lookout for Tea Party applications.

In "many" cases, the report said, organizations put on the list had to wait more than two years to receive notice from the IRS on the status of their applications.

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/05/obama-irs-findings-intolerable-and-inexcusable-164011.html

Obama: IRS findings 'intolerable and inexcusable'

President Obama blasted the findings Tuesday of the investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's heightened scrutiny of conservative groups as "intolerable and inexcusable."

"I have now had the opportunity to review the Treasury Department watchdog’s report on its investigation of IRS personnel who improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. And the report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable," he said in a written statement hours after Treasury released the report. "The federal government must conduct itself in a way that’s worthy of the public’s trust, and that’s especially true for the IRS. The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test."

[Wrong Direction]

I'll state the obvious...

1. This wasn't just a few career bureaucrats going too far.

2. Nobody knows how high this goes.

And a few opinions...

1. I seriously doubt a non-political senior manager in IRS initiates this on their own and says nothing to their political leadership.

2. I find it hard to believe that even the political head of the IRS initiates this stuff without some political direction.

3. I very seriously doubt that this ever gets back to Obama, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets back to the white house or the Obama political apparatus (Axelrod, Rahm, Jarrett, even Biden)

[mistertim]

Why in the world would senior White House political leadership take the kind of chance that telling the IRS to do this would entail? The diminishing returns would make it very far from worth the risk. Trading a potentially administration crippling scandal for, what, the ability to annoy some conservative Tea Party groups with lots of extra questions to fill out on forms? MAYBE catching a couple (out of tons of them) that might not be able to justify their claim of tax exempt status?

[aREDSKIN]

Pretty scathing, from POLITICO. Pretty staunch BO supporters.

““And it goes beyond even the story,” National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who covered the Clinton and Bush scandals and was once the AP Washington bureau chief, said on the show. “One common thing with Benghazi and the IRS scandal, is we’re being misled every day. We were lied to on Benghazi, on the talking points behind Benghazi, for months. We were lied to by the IRS for months and now they’re sending a clear message to our sources:

Don’t embarrass the administration or we’re coming after you.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/dc-turns-on-obama-91386_Page2.html#ixzz2TLxZ9pxp

[gbear]

For all those suspecting a political appointee made this bold/stupid policy, I have a quick question. How many political appointee positions are there at the IRS? I thought the agency was outside of politics for the most part. Last I heard the number was 2...and at least one of them was a Bush appointee.

My second question is "Will Congress look in the mirror when assigning blame for designing an ambiguous tax code allowing for a flood of applicants, for providing little in the way of guidance for how the exemptions are to be applied, and for underfunding those who are supposed to work the cases leaving staffing shortages?" Don't worry though because the IRS is going to lose 5 more days to the sequester.

[Elessar78]

Sorry if this has been posted already, but the Internal Revenue Service targeting groups whose very existence and even NAME is about paying less taxes isn't exactly nefarious. While wanting to pay less taxes is not illegal, there has to be a level of curiosity associated whether or not everything TEA party groups was above board from a tax perspective.

It'd be like criticizing the FBI for "targeting" a group called "Terrorists against Capitalism".

[Chants]

Sorry if this has been posted already, but the Internal Revenue Service targeting groups whose very existence and even NAME is about paying less taxes isn't exactly nefarious.

So, anyone who enters the public policy debate in favor of paying less tax justifiably opens themselves up to intense IRS scrutiny. They had it coming, don't cha know? That's insane.

Arguing in favor of less taxation is a perfectly mainstream policy position many, many Americans have taken since the founding of this country. Terrorism has never been in the mainstream of American political dialogue, ever. Drawing some sort of symmetry between the two is either incredibly naive, or malintentioned.

[gbear]

Quick question to which I may have missed the answer, how should the IRS investigate groups claiming to be non political? If you were given a small staff and told to review these cases would you direct them to look in areas where we see what appears to be obvious efforts to duck taxes? What if a large grouping of them had something in common where the investigation on the grounds of commonality might raise the issues we see before us now?

If you were looking at the biggest nonprofit spender in the 2012 election, it would be CrossRoads GPS founded by Rove spending $70 million attacking Obama and propping Romney. Or maybe one could look at Alliance for America's Future saying they don't intend to intervene in politics right before backing governors in Nevada and Florida.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exercise for all of us armchair project managers griping about this: If you had a stack of 27,000 (made up number) new cases where the exemption was being filed and a small staff, how would you review them?

I know for me, I would rank them biggest to smallest and have a graduated inspection rate at different size categories. However, if after a couple dozen of them I noticed a particular trend, I would increase my inspection rate for those whom I have most often found to be skirting the intention of the law. I would do so under the guise of maximizing the return on my limited resources. I would also note the need to reassess periodically to make sure the groups focused on were indeed more likely to be dodging taxes.

Fair?

[Elessar78]

So, anyone who enters the public policy debate in favor of paying less tax justifiably opens themselves up to intense IRS scrutiny. They had it coming, don't cha know? That's insane.

Arguing in favor of less taxation is a perfectly mainstream policy position many, many Americans have taken since the founding of this country. Terrorism has never been in the mainstream of American political dialogue, ever. Drawing some sort of symmetry between the two is either incredibly naive, or malintentioned.

Okay, I'll bite, so if you call yourself "Southern Moonshiners Association" would you expect scrutiny from ATF? In the realm of the ATF's responsibility, what group would you red flag for further scrutiny.

I think it's incredibly naive to name your group "Taxed Enough Already" and not expect scrutiny on your tax activities. But that line of thinking seems par for the course.

[twa]

ya'll seem to be inferring these groups advocate not paying legal taxes rather than lobbying to reduce both the tax burden and govt waste.

any evidence to support that?

IRS targeting is verboten as far as issue positions

[chipwhich]

ya'll seem to be inferring these groups advocate not paying legal taxes rather than lobbying to reduce both the tax burden and govt waste.

any evidence to support that?

IRS targeting is verboten as far as issue positions

All this noise in the thread. Should there be political charitable orgs. Should tea party be allowed to have them.

Nice everyone avoids the actual issue. The issue is just targeting the name or other key words in the application. The groups haven't even had a chance to defraud the government.

It's about the target

[twa]

It's about the target

yep(I prefer the term targeting)......the IRS definitely should not be thought police

nor the EPA for that matter

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2529609#.UZIq1hQ69Ts.twitter

Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

[Bang]

yep(I prefer the term targeting)......the IRS definitely should not be thought police

nor the EPA for that matter

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2529609#.UZIq1hQ69Ts.twitter

Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

I completely agree. As i said before, this sort of thing undermines EVERYTHING.

the IrS isn't popular with anyone anyway,, to be used as an enforcer or a threat is VERY bad business.

The EPA should not disallow info to any group based on their political stance, is smacks of trying to conform their data even if they're unsure of it.. and if they are unsure than they should be willing to share it to get the best solutions to various problems.

deciding ahead of time to reject based on affiliation is very close minded and serves no one they're supposed to be serving,, namely, us..

~Bang

[Wrong Direction]

Why in the world would senior White House political leadership take the kind of chance that telling the IRS to do this would entail? The diminishing returns would make it very far from worth the risk. Trading a potentially administration crippling scandal for, what, the ability to annoy some conservative Tea Party groups with lots of extra questions to fill out on forms? MAYBE catching a couple (out of tons of them) that might not be able to justify their claim of tax exempt status?

According to this article, it goes directly to the Obama campaign against Romney. This guy is beginning to make Nixon look like a choir boy.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Obama-campaign-co-chair-attacked-Romney-conservative-group-in-2012-with-leaked-IRS-scandal-documents

Claim: Obama Campaign Co-Chair Attacked Romney with Leaked IRS Docs

...

NOM, a pro-traditional marriage organization, claims the IRS leaked their 2008 confidential financial documents to the rival Human Rights Campaign. Those NOM documents were published on the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Solmonese was also a 2012 Obama campaign co-chairman.

...

Solmonese, then still the HRC’s president, said in the release he felt Romney’s “funding of a hate-filled campaign designed to drive a wedge between Americans is beyond despicable.”

“Not only has Romney signed NOM’s radical marriage pledge, now we know he’s one of the donors that NOM has been so desperate to keep secret all these years,” Solmonese added.

Solmonese resigned his position at HRC the next day and took up a position as an Obama campaign co-chair. He had announced the then-pending resignation from HRC the previous autumn.

...

In early April 2012, NOM published documents which it said showed this leaked confidential information did not come from a “whistleblower” but “came directly from the Internal Revenue Service and was provided to NOM's political opponents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).”

NOM discovered that when HRC published its confidential financial documents, it failed to conceal the source of the documents. “After software removed the layers obscuring the document, it is shown that the document came from the Internal Revenue Service,” NOM asserted in its April 2012 release.

“The top of each page says, ‘THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIPS. OFFICIAL USE ONLY,’" the statement continues. "On each page of the return is stamped a document ID of ‘100560209.’ Only the IRS would have the Form 990 with ‘Official Use’ information."

NOM president Brian Brown argued in that April 2012 release that the leak was made to benefit President Obama’s re-election campaign against Romney, his GOP challenger. “The American people are entitled to know how a confidential tax return containing private donor information filed exclusively with the Internal Revenue Service has been given to our political opponents whose leader also happens to be co-chairing President Obama's reelection committee,” Brown said.

“It is shocking that a political ally of President Obama's would come to possess and then publicly release a confidential tax return that came directly from the Internal Revenue Service," he declared. "We demand to know who is responsible for this criminal act and what the Administration is going to do to get to the bottom of it.”

Yes, I'm anticipating several posts attacking the source.

[gbear]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row.html

I wonder when this will resonate: the same letter which seems to anger so many of the Tea Party activists was sent to Emerge America (a left leaning group). It's worth noting, at least to my mind, I haven't seen any of the Tea Party organizations saying their application was denied as a result of the scrutiny. Emerge America is the only one I've seen with this claim.

So all this targeting of politically themed organizations only netted one, and it was a liberal group. However, the Tea Party orgs are the ones filing suit.

I am just happy the net was around more than just the Tea Party.

[twa]

gbear, if I delay and make unreasonable demands over a period of yrs, is that better than denying?

Limbo is a interesting place to live long term, and the fact none were denied after existing in Limbo(and extra scrutiny/demands) should raise even more flags

[Larry]

Quick question to which I may have missed the answer, how should the IRS investigate groups claiming to be non political? If you were given a small staff and told to review these cases would you direct them to look in areas where we see what appears to be obvious efforts to duck taxes? What if a large grouping of them had something in common where the investigation on the grounds of commonality might raise the issues we see before us now?

If you were looking at the biggest nonprofit spender in the 2012 election, it would be CrossRoads GPS founded by Rove spending $70 million attacking Obama and propping Romney. Or maybe one could look at Alliance for America's Future saying they don't intend to intervene in politics right before backing governors in Nevada and Florida.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exercise for all of us armchair project managers griping about this: If you had a stack of 27,000 (made up number) new cases where the exemption was being filed and a small staff, how would you review them?

I know for me, I would rank them biggest to smallest and have a graduated inspection rate at different size categories. However, if after a couple dozen of them I noticed a particular trend, I would increase my inspection rate for those whom I have most often found to be skirting the intention of the law. I would do so under the guise of maximizing the return on my limited resources. I would also note the need to reassess periodically to make sure the groups focused on were indeed more likely to be dodging taxes.

Fair?

I do think it's at least worth considering. Whether the IRS was targeting the keyword "Tea Party" because they were likely to be conservative, or because they were likely to be political.

My opinion, based on the almost non-existent facts that we've seen so far, is that it started as the former, and when the supervisor found out, it was changed to make it more like the latter.

[mistertim]

According to this article, it goes directly to the Obama campaign against Romney. This guy is beginning to make Nixon look like a choir boy.

Yes, I'm anticipating several posts attacking the source.

Its not just the source (though that in itself can, understandably, give pause) but its the fact that the article is purely speculative, provides no hard evidence that the document was really leaked directly by someone at the IRS other than a guy saying "we used software to reveal that the document said <x>", and uses mostly inferred guilt by association.

If the IRS document claim were provable and they could show that the IRS intentionally leaked that tax document and the Obama administration was somehow behind it there is NO WAY they wouldn't have gone public with it in a major way; the political shock wave and fallout from it would have rivaled a nuclear blast.

[Larry]

According to this article, it goes directly to the Obama campaign against Romney. This guy is beginning to make Nixon look like a choir boy.

Yes, I'm anticipating several posts attacking the source.

As opposed to, say, pointing out that your entire quote consists entirely of "anti-gay group president claims . . . ", without any proof I can see whatsoever?

[gbear]

TWA, of the "unreasonable" demands, how many were also made of the liberal groups? From the article I linked, it seems the follow up letters were essentially the same across liberal and conservative groups. I understand the "unreasonable" argument, but I doubt the story of "unreasonable" gets anywhere near the play unless it is uneven and unreasonable. I mean the tax system being unreasonable is a complaint kind of like complaining about humidity in a swamp. It sucks, and...

...

...

[Larry]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row.html

I wonder when this will resonate: the same letter which seems to anger so many of the Tea Party activists was sent to Emerge America (a left leaning group). It's worth noting, at least to my mind, I haven't seen any of the Tea Party organizations saying their application was denied as a result of the scrutiny. Emerge America is the only one I've seen with this claim.

I think it's a safe bet that some Tea Party organizations got demands for lots of documents, and that some of them didn't. And that some liberal groups gut hit, and some didn't.

That's one of the things that make cases like this tough to prove, either way.

(Just like lots of other claims of discrimination or similar claims.)

[Kilmer17]

Has the IRS apologized for innapropriately targetting liberal groups as well?

[twa]

Interesting if true, ya have to wonder if part of this is a competence problem.

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/14/irs-told-pro-life-organization-it-had-to-promote-abortion/

IRS Told Pro-Life Organization It Had to Promote Abortion

Shinn said the IRS contacted him regarding his application for nonprofit status, and was told he didn’t qualify.

“The representative was telling me I had to provide information on all aspects of abortion, I couldn’t just educate the church from the pro-life perspective,” he said. “Every time I pressed her on this issue and asked her to clarify her position, she would state that it wasn’t what she was saying, and then, she would repeat it almost the same way.”

The IRS agent did not respond to a WND request for comment on the ministry’s position.

But Shinn said he was accused of setting up a political organization.

“I asked her why she said we were political organization and she said it was because we had said in our application that we did less than 5 percent political activity. I explained to her that this was what was stated in the application and all we were doing was acknowledging that we were doing less than 5 percent political activity,” he said.

He said the woman then accused him ......

[Wrong Direction]

Its not just the source (though that in itself can, understandably, give pause) but its the fact that the article is purely speculative, provides no hard evidence that the document was really leaked directly by someone at the IRS other than a guy saying "we used software to reveal that the document said <x>", and uses mostly inferred guilt by association.

If the IRS document claim were provable and they could show that the IRS intentionally leaked that tax document and the Obama administration was somehow behind it there is NO WAY they wouldn't have gone public with it in a major way; the political shock wave and fallout from it would have rivaled a nuclear blast.

They're claiming to know the IRS control #. We don't need to speculate. It's either an accurate control number or it's not. If it's not, the IRS could prove it. If it is, there's illegal leaking of private docs directly to the Obama campaign going on here.