IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families with Audits
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This is How the IRS Plays with Tax Dollars Money....
Jim McDermott, Megyn Kelly have heated exchange over tea party-IRS hearing
3:26 PM 06/05/2013
On Wednesday’s “America Live,” Washington Democratic Rep.
Jim McDermott defended his position on the tax-exempt status of
conservative groups under intense questioning from Fox News host Megyn
Kelly.
McDermott charged that his critics were selectively listening to his remarks during Tuesday’s committee hearing when they suggested he didn’t see the Internal Revenue Service
actions as out of line.
“Anybody who would make that criticism didn’t listen to my whole speech,” McDermott said. “I spent five minutes talking, and you are talking about one line. The fact
was, I said five times that the questions that they were asked were
egregious. They were out of bounds and shouldn’t have been asked. And I
said that over and over again clearly. But what I was trying to do was
to say this process of asking for a tax exemption is one that once you
ask for one, you open yourself up to being questioned. And I think that
we want the questions to be on both sides. The only group that lost,
that was told they couldn’t have an exemption a liberal group called
Merge America.”
But then Kelly and McDermott had a back-and-forth over whether or not slow-walking tactics by the IRS was an impediment for some groups. McDermott argued there was no proof that it was, despite claims from Kevin Kookogey of a group called Lynchpins for Liberty.
“The fact is that we don’t know that to be true. If he would bring us evidence in and show it to us, we would be glad to see that, that somebody said, ‘I offered you $30,000 and because you don’t have a tax-exempt status, I’m not going to give it to you,’” McDermott said. “If he had a letter or something like that, then we would have something to talk about. But when you’re just listening to people tell you stuff — people tell us in Congress things all of the time, and the IRS hears people say all of the time, and they ask more questions and ask for documentation and that’s the nature. This is not an honor system for giving tax exemption. When Merge America, a progressive organization who was training Democratic woman to run for office, when they asked the IRS for questions, they said, ‘No, that’s political.’ That’s the way it should be.”
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McDermott charged that his critics were selectively listening to his remarks during Tuesday’s committee hearing when they suggested he didn’t see the Internal Revenue Service
actions as out of line.“Anybody who would make that criticism didn’t listen to my whole speech,” McDermott said. “I spent five minutes talking, and you are talking about one line. The fact
was, I said five times that the questions that they were asked were
egregious. They were out of bounds and shouldn’t have been asked. And I
said that over and over again clearly. But what I was trying to do was
to say this process of asking for a tax exemption is one that once you
ask for one, you open yourself up to being questioned. And I think that
we want the questions to be on both sides. The only group that lost,
that was told they couldn’t have an exemption a liberal group called
Merge America.”But then Kelly and McDermott had a back-and-forth over whether or not slow-walking tactics by the IRS was an impediment for some groups. McDermott argued there was no proof that it was, despite claims from Kevin Kookogey of a group called Lynchpins for Liberty.
MCDERMOTT: Ms. Kelly, they can still operate. They can still collect money. They can still put out advertisementsMcDermott explained his skepticism to Kelly and insisted it would take more proof to convince him.
KELLY: But Congressman McDermott, that ignores the reality of the testimony you heard. [Kevin] Kookogey talked about how they lost a $30,000 donation because a lot of people don’t want to donate to groups that haven’t received that stamp of approval in officially becoming a 501(c)(4).
MCDERMOTT: That was not under testimony or under oath.
KELLY: You reject it?
MCDERMOTT: He didn’t offer any proof. He didn’t offer any proof.
KELLY: He was lying, is this your answer to that?
MCDERMOTT: No, no. Wait a minute. Ms. Kelly, you are putting words in my mouth.
KELLY: I am not. I am asking you.
MCDERMOTT: You are putting words in my mouth. Stop it.
KELLY: I’m not, sir. I am asking you whether you are rejecting that testimonial as not true.
MCDERMOTT: I am saying people can say anything and they do say in testimony before committees.
“The fact is that we don’t know that to be true. If he would bring us evidence in and show it to us, we would be glad to see that, that somebody said, ‘I offered you $30,000 and because you don’t have a tax-exempt status, I’m not going to give it to you,’” McDermott said. “If he had a letter or something like that, then we would have something to talk about. But when you’re just listening to people tell you stuff — people tell us in Congress things all of the time, and the IRS hears people say all of the time, and they ask more questions and ask for documentation and that’s the nature. This is not an honor system for giving tax exemption. When Merge America, a progressive organization who was training Democratic woman to run for office, when they asked the IRS for questions, they said, ‘No, that’s political.’ That’s the way it should be.”
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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/05/jim-mcdermott-megyn-kelly-heated-exchange-tea-party-irs-hearing-video/#ixzz2VSYOAI5u
Earlier this week, in a feeble attempt at humor on Facebook, I posted: “If you haven’t been audited by the IRS during the Obama administration, can you even call yourself a conservative?” Given the scale of the abuses, I should probably just shorten it and say, “Only RINOs don’t get audited.” My wife and I got audited in 2011, with the IRS examining every inch of our adoption the previous year. The process was painful, but we got through it, and our refund may have been adjusted by a few dollars (the amount of the adjustment was so small, I don’t actually remember). In other words, the audit was a gigantic waste of time — for the IRS and for our family. A Facebook commenter, however, pointed me to a report that made me rethink the experience.
As we get word that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood, check out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent. More details from the Taxpayer Advocate Service:
During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of returns claiming the refundable adoption credit were subject to additional review to determine if an examination was necessary. The most common reasons were income and a lack of documentation.
■ Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.While many returns had missing or incomplete information (more on that in a moment), what was the outcome of this massive audit campaign? Not much:
■ Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits is over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income (AGI) of the taxpayers involved is about 64,000. The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds.
Despite Congress’ express intent to target the credit to low and middle income families, the IRS created income-based rules that were responsible for over one-third of all additional reviews in FY2012.So Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption – a process that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many middle-class families — and the IRS responded by implementing an audit campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent.
■ Of the $668.1 million in adoption credit claims in tax year (TY) 2011 as a result of adoption credit audits, the IRS only disallowed $11 million — or one and one-half percent — in adoption credit claims. However, the IRS has also had to pay out $2.1 million in interest in TY 2011 to taxpayers whose refunds were held past the 45-day period allowed by law.
This audit wave got almost no media coverage, but what was the experience like for individual families? In a word, grueling. Huge document requests with short turnaround times were followed by lengthy IRS delays in processing, all with no understanding for the unique documentation challenges of international adoption. Here’s how one adoptive family described the experience:
It was early June when a letter arrived from IRS explaining that we (and lots of other adoptive parents, as it turns out) were being audited re: our adoption tax credit. The folks at IRS gave us 30 days to gather our receipts, invoices, cancelled checks, etc. to document our expenses and submit said documents to their tax examiner. If we couldn’t comply within the time limit, they would set aside our request for a credit and we would be out of luck, meaning no more of our money would be refunded to us. If we got them the paperwork, then they would review our records and decide how much more of our money they would refund to us. (Am I bitter? Just a tad bit . . .)She went on to explain the challenges of documenting expenses (challenges we shared in our own audit, when I ultimately decided it was simply futile trying to document how we spent all the cash we took to Ethiopia). Her post concluded as she wrapped up the audit and waited for the IRS to respond:
Anyway, this might seem to be an easy fix to those unfamiliar with foreign adoption. After all, if you adopt, you work with an agency and that’s a business, right? Businesses give receipts and invoices, right? And everyone has cancelled checks, rights? Um, not so much. See, we adopted from Kazakhstan…on the other side of the freakin’ earth…and it’s a cash economy…that uses its own currency…and English isn’t the language of Kazakhstan. The aforementioned issues presented a teensy problem to securing what IRS needed in a timely manner.
Anyway, here we are, 30 days later. For the last several days, my dining room table has been covered with documents. I’ve been reliving my bad old times of adoption dossier preparation but in reverse this time. I finally got it all compiled, copies made, and the huge package of receipts, invoices, translations and conversions sent off to the IRS via Express mail. Now we wait for an answer…to see how much of our money the IRS will give us back. Let’s see if they can turn it around in 30 days like I had to. Bitter??? Nooooo, not me.Is it the IRS’s job to frustrate and obstruct the intent of Congress by targeting vulnerable families? Once again, here’s the Taxpayer Advocate Service:
With respect to the Adoption Credit, and in particular the credit for adoption of special needs children, the IRS has failed abysmally to take into account that over 45 percent of adopting families are at or below 200 percent federal poverty level, presenting particular communication and functional literacy challenges even as they are desperately in need of the funds which Congress has sought to deliver to them.As an adoptive family, it’s sometimes difficult to describe the immense challenges in gathering paperwork, opening your lives to social workers for home studies, then expensive travel to sometimes-corrupt foreign locales to then launch a new life with a child you love immensely but who is also experiencing his or her own culture shock and adjustment. All of this places a great strain on family finances and emotions. To then face an audit on the other side? All so the IRS can collect a whopping 1 percent additional revenue? It’s beyond the pale. If the IRS is concerned about fraud, it can audit random samples, not the vast majority of adoptive families claiming the credit.
The IRS is a broken institution. Yet despite its moral and legal corruption, it still wields immense power. As Congress investigates wrongdoing, it’s past time to consider fundamental tax reform. In other words, starve the beast. It has proven it can’t be trusted with power.
Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LUO
Published: May 26, 2013
Patcnews 784,160 Comments
When CVFC, a conservative veterans’ group in California, applied for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service,
its biggest expenditure that year was several thousand dollars in radio
ads backing a Republican candidate for Congress.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Several conclusions about the I.R.S. by J. Russell
George, an inspector general, were disputed by some former agency
officials.
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The Wetumpka Tea Party,
from Alabama, sponsored training for a get-out-the-vote initiative
dedicated to the “defeat of President Barack Obama” while the I.R.S. was
weighing its application.
And the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, whose application languished
with the I.R.S. for more than two years, sent out e-mails to members
about Mitt Romney campaign events and organized members to distribute
Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign literature.
Representatives of these organizations have cried foul in recent weeks
about their treatment by the I.R.S., saying they were among dozens of
conservative groups unfairly targeted by the agency, harassed with
inappropriate questionnaires and put off for months or years as the
agency delayed decisions on their applications.
But a close examination of these groups and others reveals an array of
election activities that tax experts and former I.R.S. officials said
would provide a legitimate basis for flagging them for closer review.
“Money is not the only thing that matters,” said Donald B. Tobin, a
former lawyer with the Justice Department’s tax division who is a law
professor at Ohio State University. “While some of the I.R.S. questions
may have been overbroad, you can look at some of these groups and
understand why these questions were being asked.”
The stakes are high for both the I.R.S. and lawmakers in Congress, whose
election fortunes next year will hinge in no small part on a flood of
political spending by such advocacy groups. They are often favored by
strategists and donors not for the tax benefits — they typically do not
have significant income subject to tax — but because they do not have to
reveal their donors, allowing them to pour hundreds of millions of
dollars into elections without disclosing where the money came from.
The I.R.S. is already separately reviewing roughly 300 tax-exempt groups
that may have engaged in improper campaign activity in past years,
according to agency planning documents. Some election lawyers said they
believed a wave of lawsuits against the I.R.S. and intensifying
Congressional criticism of its handling of applications were intended in
part to derail those audits, giving political nonprofit organizations a
freer hand during the 2014 campaign.
After the tax agency was denounced in recent weeks by President Obama,
lawmakers and critics for what they described as improper scrutiny of at
least 100 groups seeking I.R.S. recognition, The New York Times
examined more than a dozen of the organizations, most of them organized
as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups under the tax code, or in some
cases as 501(c)(3) charities. None ran major election advertising
campaigns, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, the main
activity of a small number of big-spending tax-exempt groups that
emerged as major players in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
But some organized volunteers, distributed pamphlets and held rallies
leading up to the 2010 elections or the 2012 presidential election, as
conservatives fought to turn out Mr. Obama.
A report issued this month by the Treasury Department’s inspector
general, J. Russell George, found that inappropriate criteria, including
groups’ policy positions, were used to flag some cases and that
specialists in the I.R.S. office in Cincinnati, which reviews all
tax-exemption requests, sometimes asked questions that were irrelevant
to the application process.
And agency officials have acknowledged that specialists inappropriately
used keywords like “Tea Party” and “Patriots” in searching through
applications.
But some former I.R.S. officials disputed several of Mr. George’s
conclusions, including his assertion that it was inappropriate to ask
groups about their donors, or whether their leaders had plans to run for
public office. While unusual, the former officials said, such questions
are not prohibited if relevant to an application under consideration.
-- President Obama -- I.R.S.
-- Benghazi -- billary clinton -- James Rosen
-- Fox News -- Marine Salute
-- Drone Strikes -- Illegal Aliens in the Oval Office
-- Anthony Weiner -- Minnesota
-- Same Sex Marriage -- Obesity Breath Test
-- george soros occupy wall street
-- obama regime gun control
-- obama regime healthcare bill plan
-- eric holder fast and furious
-- obama regime sequester
-- obama regime the fiscal cliff
ll-- President Obama -- I.R.S.
-- Benghazi -- billary clinton -- James Rosen
-- Fox News -- Marine Salute
-- Drone Strikes -- Illegal Aliens in the Oval Office
-- Anthony Weiner -- Minnesota
-- Same Sex Marriage -- Obesity Breath Test
-- george soros occupy wall street
-- obama regime gun control
-- obama regime healthcare bill plan
-- eric holder fast and furious
-- obama regime sequester
-- obama regime the fiscal cliff
IRS revokes conservative group’s tax-exempt status over anti-Clinton statements
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The Internal Revenue Servicehas revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative charity for making statements critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, according to a USA Today report.
The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based in Manassas, Va., “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications,” according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.
The IRS said the center acted as an “action organization” by publishing alerts on its website for columns written by its president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The IRS pointed out a column that appeared to be published by Townhall on April 2, 2004, in which Mr. Aldrich wrote, “if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere,” the Free Beacon reported.
Another article cited by the IRS was a 2005 piece titled “Stop Hillary Now!,” which rallied “Clinton haters” to inform voters of Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious conduct,” USA Today reported.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview with The Washington Post last week that the IRS and Treasury Department are likely to rewrite controversial draft guidelines to better define “candidate-related political activities.”
“My bottom line is that it’s in everyone’s interest to have clarification,” he said. “My position since I started more than four months ago is that we ought to have clarity, and that any rule that comes out ought to be fair and easy to administer.”
Conservatives have argued that the proposals are just another way for the Obama administration to target right-leaning groups.
The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based in Manassas, Va., “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications,” according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.
The IRS said the center acted as an “action organization” by publishing alerts on its website
for columns written by its president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, the Washington Free Beacon reported.The IRS pointed out a column that appeared to be published by Townhall on April 2, 2004, in which Mr. Aldrich wrote, “if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices
at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere,” the Free Beacon reported.Another article cited by the IRS was a 2005 piece titled “Stop Hillary Now!,” which rallied “Clinton haters” to inform voters of Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious conduct,” USA Today reported.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview with The Washington Post last week that the IRS and Treasury Department are likely to rewrite controversial draft guidelines to better define “candidate-related political activities.”
“My bottom line is that it’s in everyone’s interest to have clarification,” he said. “My position since I started more than four months ago is that we ought to have clarity, and that any rule that comes out ought to be fair and easy
to administer.”Conservatives have argued that the proposals are just another way for the Obama administration to target right-leaning groups.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/irs-revokes-conservative-groups-tax-exempt-status-/#ixzz2zieRHavM
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