Free Republic

Last weekend, a few pastors of large, evangelical congregations chose to convert their pulpits into planks for the Republican Party platform. These participants in “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” sought to challenge IRS regulations that maintain a wall between tax-exempt religious activities and taxable political ones. Citing controversial issues like reproductive freedom and same-sex marriage, they claimed that a biblical mandate required them to take a more activist role in instructing their congregants to choose the candidate who matched their political beliefs. Their actions are yet one more indicator of the degree to which purveyors of a reactionary political agenda have continued...

IRS undercover operations: Privacy invasion? The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, "I'm not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it'll save you $1,000. Want to take it?") That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed....

Last week, the Bush administration proposed a three-page bill to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion. It died in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this week. On Friday, though, the House approved a far bigger, broader, and beefier version of the bill--which has ballooned to a remarkable 442 pages. The vote was 263 to 171, with the bulk of the opposition coming from Republicans. Because the Senate already approved the measure, it immediately went to President Bush, who signed it into law. On the theory that this would be a way to convince previously skeptical...

A northern Minnesota preacher's presidential endorsement from the pulpit of Republican John McCain over the weekend is part of a national challenge of federal restrictions on such political expressions. The Rev. Gus Booth of Warroad Community Church made his endorsement Sunday as part of the Alliance Defense Fund's "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." The fund said Booth and other pastors around the country were exercising "their First Amendment right to preach on the subject, despite federal tax regulations that prohibit intervening or participating in a political campaign." Booth, a delegate to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, said Monday he did...

Pastor Luke Emrich prepared his sermon this week knowing his remarks could invite an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. But that was the whole point, so Emrich forged ahead with his message: Thou shalt vote according to the Scriptures. “I’m telling you straight up, I would choose life,” Emrich told about 100 worshippers yesterday at New Life Church, a nondenominational evangelical congregation about 40 miles from Milwaukee. “I would cast a vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin,” he said. “But friends, it’s your choice to make, it’s not my choice. I won’t be in the voting booth with...

Contact: Jerry Horn, Priests for Life, 540-220-0095 WASHINGTON, September 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, commented today on the "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" that a group of pastors observed this past weekend, in which they spoke about the moral qualifications of candidates for public office, with a freedom that they maintain the IRS is wrongly taking from pastors. "This effort is not about bringing politics into the pulpit; it's about getting government out of the pulpit," Fr. Pavone explained. "It should be Church authority, not government authority that determines the criteria for how pastors...

There have been some tax calculators posted today, and a Yahoo article promoting one of them. They portray only the proposed income tax changes, without NObama's ideas for raising Social Security and Medicare taxes. I couldn't find the Yahoo article that was running earlier, can anyone else? NObama's tax plans should be exposed for the sham they are, please do what you can!

As the presidential election draws closer, a conservative group has launched an effort to “reclaim pastors’ constitutional right to speak freely and truthfully from the pulpit.” Pastors may comment on candidates and voting -- without fearing loss of their tax exemption, the Alliance Defense Fund insists. The group says its Pulpit Initiative is a legal effort designed to protect the First Amendment rights of pastors. As part of that effort, pastors participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday on September 28 will deliver to sermons of their own that apply Scripture to the subject of candidates running for government office. Not so...

Harry Reid argues that US Income tax is VOLUNTARY, VIDEO of full interview here -- http://digg.com/politics/Senator_Harry_Reid_Says_Paying_Income_Tax_is_Voluntary

The IRS & the Constitution by: Irene Warren, September 24, 2008 Sept. 17, 2008, marked the 221st Anniversary of the United States Constitution, a time when many reflect on America’s heritage and freedoms. However, one organization is exercising one of its First Amendment rights by filing a People’s Petition for Redress concerning the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment this year, an action to restore order within the U.S. Constitution. We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education, Inc. is a 501(c)( 3) organization, established November 24, 1997. They filed a People’s Petition for Redress claiming that the United States government has...

A federal search warrant is being executed at the headquarters of Petters Group Worldwide, which has Sun Country Airlines and Polaroid among its holdings. FBI spokesman Paul McCabe confirmed Wednesday that the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the IRS criminal investigative division and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service were all part of an ongoing investigation. He says agents on Wednesday were executing the search warrant at 4400 Baker Road in Minnetonka, which is where Petters Group Worldwide is located.

News has emerged that the organizers of that anti-Iran rally that famously got snarled up in Senator Hillary Clinton's ire at Governor Sarah Palin last week were threatened by New York Democrats with IRS action against their tax-exempt status if they allowed Palin to speak. CBS local NY news reported this little fact and so did NBC but most of the national news has ignored this outrageous threat to use the IRS to silence Governor Palin. Accusing New York Democrats of using "McCarthyism" to shut Palin down, Democrat Assemblyman Dov Hikind was flabbergasted by the behind the scenes threats...

Name ‘em and shame ‘em. Seriously. Fox News and the Journal should be all over this. Judging from the number of Democrats quoted in the piece as being upset about it, there’s no shortage of people willing to leak. Let’s find out who, precisely, decided that inviting a prominent Republican to a nonpartisan rally might warrant a visit from the IRS. And then, in the words of a famous cult leader, let’s get in their faces. Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Charles Rangel wrote six checks for about $10,800 in back taxes, and then penned an open letter to New Yorkers Friday, saying he has done nothing dishonorable and is the target of a GOP "guerrilla war." Rangel, the dean of the New York congressional delegation, has faced a string of embarrassing revelations — he didn't pay taxes on rental income for a beach house in the Dominican Republic; he used three rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, including one for a campaign office; he used his congressional stationery to drum up private donations to a college center named after...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Charles Rangel wrote six checks for about $10,800 in back taxes, and then penned an open letter to New Yorkers Friday, saying he has done nothing dishonorable and is the target of a GOP "guerrilla war."

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service is trying to collect billions of dollars in late taxes from nearly half a million federal employees. Documents obtained by WTOP radio through the Freedom of Information Act show the federal employees and retirees did not pay more than $3.5 billion in taxes owed last year.

The Tax-Dodge Derivative Anita Raghavan 09.11.08, 6:55 PM ET While Lehman Brothers was fighting for its life in the markets today, it was also battling in a Senate panel's hearing on whether the company and others created a set of financial products whose primary purpose is to dodge taxes owned on U.S. stock dividends. The "most compelling" reason for entering into dividend-related stock swaps are the tax savings, Highbridge Capital Management Treasury and Finance Director Richard Potapchuk told the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Lehman Brothers , Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank are among the companies behind the products. "Without...

Republican congressional leaders wasted their breath in demanding the removal of tax-dodging Rep. Charles Rangel as chairman of the House tax-writing committee. With the election only weeks away, Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't about to tacitly admit hers is far from "the most ethical Congress in history." Yet Rep. Rangel, D-N.Y., the subject of multiple ethics investigations, has disgraced Congress through his shady real-estate deals, his shakedown of corporations and foundations for donations to an academic center that bears his name, and now his failure to pay federal, state and local taxes on income derived from his posh beachfront villa in...

Keller stated, “Senator’s Obama and Clinton have been in the public, aggressively promoting that they were people of faith. Obama especially, has had a clear strategy to promote himself as a Christian. I have every right and responsibility under my exemption to deal with their statements and educate the public on these issues. You certainly can’t expect a Biblically illiterate press to hold them accountable on these issues, especially when they lie to the public about their beliefs.” Keller added, “The fact is, I have also spoken about Senator McCain’s statements about his faith. The problem the IRS has is...

Barack Obama's campaign has made a point about not taking money from big donors, even though it has received six figure bundled contributions from "little, ordinary people" like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Broters, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Execlon, and Microsoft,* and even though Obama broke his pledge to accept Federal campaign financing and the accompanying spending limits. The Obama campaign's fundraising ethics also include illegal and possibly rigged lotteries like "Dinner with Barack;" the "Backstage with Barack" lottery was modified to allow entry without a donation under pressure from Minnesota and possibly other law enforcement agencies. While Barack Obama is at...

CHICAGO -- Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules. The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship. "For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the...

CHICAGO -- Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules. The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship. "For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the...

Former IRS Employee Sued for Tax Scam Chicago (Sept. 5, 2008) By WebCPA staff | The Justice Department has accused a former Internal Revenue Service secretary of cheating her tax prep clients and the government out of approximately $850,000. The government filed suit in a federal district court in Chicago seeking a permanent injunction against Debra Windham to prevent her from preparing tax returns from others. Windham, who prepares returns under the business name Special Circumstances, allegedly claimed false deductions for her clients and then applied without their knowledge for refund anticipation loans in their names.

A man threatening to kill himself over his finances instead rammed his car into an Internal Revenue Service building. The 48-year-old taxpayer was taken to a hospital in Birmingham on Tuesday morning to be evaluated, but did not appear to be injured, according to the Birmingham News. The man and his wife called the IRS office earlier that morning and made a threat. An IRS employee then called the Birmingham police, who contacted the county sheriff's office. They proceeded to his home, but his wife said he had left already. They reached him on his cell phone and he told...

(English-language translation) In addition to allegedly approving legislative bills and cabinet appointments in exchange for money, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are investigating alleged acts of money laundering and bank fraud by New Progressive Party Senator Jorge de Castro Font, sources to EL VOCERO reported. According to the sources, this is why the IRS joined the investigation which began in March. EL VOCERO anticipated on July 8 that federal authorities were investigating the alleged approval of bills in exchange for money coming from "large interests", as well as the confirmation of cabinet members....

It took seven years, but Charles Ulrich did something many people dream about, but few succeed at: He beat the IRS in a tax dispute. Not only that, but tax experts say potentially millions of other taxpayers could benefit from his victory. The accountant from Baxter, Minn., challenged the method the IRS has used for more than 20 years to tax shares and cash distributed by mutual life insurance firms to their policyholders when they reorganize as public companies. A federal court recently agreed with his interpretation. "There's a tremendous amount of money at stake," said Robert Willens, a New...

Charles Ulrich has beat the IRS in a sgnificant tax dispute. Ulrich challenged the method the IRS has used for more than 20 years to tax shares and cash distributed by mutual life insurance firms to their policyholders when they reorganize as public companies. A federal court recently agreed with his interpretation. The dispute arose when more than 30 mutual life insurance companies became publicly traded corporations in the late 1990s and earlier this decade, in a process known as "demutualization...

It took seven years, but Charles Ulrich did something many people dream about, but few succeed at: He beat the IRS in a tax dispute. Not only that, but tax experts say potentially millions of other taxpayers could benefit from his victory.

Broad, invasive provision touches nearly every aspect of American commerce. ~~~ Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government. *** Call Congress and Tell Them to Oppose The eBay Reporting Provision in the Housing Bill: 1-866-928-3035 *** FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with...

Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government Broad, invasive provision touches nearly every aspect of American commerce. Washington, D.C. - Update: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley is pushing the bill. Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction...

Volkswagen has a number of firsts for its 2009 Jetta TDI. It is the first new diesel powered passenger car on the market in the U.S. to qualify for sales in all 50 states under the Tier 2 Bin 5 (T2B5) emissions standard. And now it's also the first diesel car to qualify for a federal income tax credit under the Advanced Lean Burn Technology Motor Vehicle income tax credit program. The Internal Revenue Service has certified that the 2009 Jetta TDI qualifies for a one-time tax credit of $1,300. That is the same amount that buyers of General Motors...

This article is the first in a series that underscores Barack Obama’s serious deficiencies in character, ethics, and integrity. The links appear at “Barack Obama: Powered by Hate,” (http://www.stentorian.com/Obama/) a compilation of Obama’s questionable campaign financing practices, plus enablement and empowerment of racists, anti-Semites, and Catholic-hating bigots. In all cases, we provide links and references so the reader can verify for himself/herself the truth of the statements. This is very important because of the numerous smears and urban legends that are in circulation. Barack Obama’s unethical, dishonest, and possibly illegal campaign financing schemes include: 1. “Dinner with Barack” lotteries that...

Black Republican leader Frances Rice runs against the grain of most Democrats when she calls them racist. She doesn’t care. That is her belief and she isn’t backing down. Her “Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican” (Rice article on why MLK was a Republican) billboards angered many on both sides of the aisle. She is still waiting for the Democrats to prove her wrong on the MLK billboards without any challenge to the contrary yet. She is one woman I respect because she admits the truth about her race’s racist history and it’s connection to the Democrat Party without...

Joe Francis, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series and CEO of Mantra Films, filed a fraud lawsuit late Thursday against Michael Barrett, the former Mantra Films corporate accountant, in the Santa Monica division of Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that Barrett, also a certified public accountant, failed his fundamental duties and tasks to Francis as the corporate accountant for Francis. According to the suit, Barrett knew there were mistakes in tax returns, returns he knew were based on his accounting ledgers he prepared, created and vouched for. Barrett never disclosed these mistakes to his client...

You may not feel rich earning $35,000 a year, but you're in the top half of taxpayers. $65,000? You're in the top 25 percent. With the political conventions fast approaching and the presidential election right around the corner, what better time to take a fresh look at how the nation's tax bill is distributed among its citizens? ... New statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the highest-earning 1% of taxpayers in America make 22.06% of all income reported to the government. That's almost twice the 12.51% of total income earned collectively by the lowest-earning 50% of workers. Yes,...

Excerpt - If you regularly sell items on online auction sites, you may find yourself on the Internal Revenue Service's radar. Recent legislation aims to help the IRS collect more taxes from online enterprises, many of which either don't know about their tax obligations or are ignoring them, according to the agency. The provision, part of the housing rescue package that President George W. Bush is expected to sign within days, will require PayPal and other processors of online payments to report annual gross receipts to the IRS for all but the smallest online merchants. ~ snip ~

Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

The Internal Revenue Service has once again warned houses of worship that federal tax law bans partisan politicking. An April 17 IRS press release reiterates that the tax agency will continue its campaign to educate churches and other tax-exempt charities about the rules governing political activity. The IRS has vowed to enforce the law through appropriate intervention and penalties. "We take very seriously our obligation to ensure that tax-exempt organizations have the information they need to make the right decisions about political campaign activities," said Steven T. Miller, commissioner of the IRS' Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division. "The vast...

Cleveland) - Multiple search warrants are being executed across Cuyahoga County today by the FBI and the IRS. Cleveland Special Agent In Charge Frank Figliuzzi tells Newsradio WTAM 1100 it's part of a long-running public corruption investigation. Figliuzzi says the affidavit supporting the search warrant are sealed, so he cannot go into further details. Figliuzzi did say that it is a broad-ranging investigation looking at the highest levels of Cuyahoga County government. County Administrator Jim McCafferty confirms that the office of County Commissioner Jimmy DiMora was among those searched. DiMora's home was also searched, as was the home of Auditor...

Federal prosecutors have dropped their criminal probe of fiscal irregularities and tax fraud by the Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. Lawyers for the civil rights activist said that means Sharpton's tax tangle won't result in an indictment or jail time, or even an appearance before a grand jury, though he's agreed to pay millions in back taxes. It also means the feds aren't pursuing allegations the civil rights leader extorted contributions from corporations in exchange for not protesting against them. Prosecutors would not comment, but law enforcement sources confirmed that the criminal probe is over. Bottom line:...

...The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support...

This is the first in a series of three articles on how your pockets are being shamelessly picked by government and big business. I bet you knew the IRS was robbing you. You just didn't know how much. Read on. Are you a middle-class retiree living here on our little sandbar with money in an IRA? The IRA is supposed to give you a break by allowing you to put money away tax-free, allow it to grow, and then tax you when you withdraw it. Sounds good, doesn't it? You're getting robbed. You're not the one benefitting by it as...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Wealthy Americans are hiding about 1.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens in a "deceptive" partnership with top foreign banks such as UBS, resulting in 100 billion dollars in lost US tax revenue, a congressional probe was told Thursday. The hearing centered on a 115-page report following investigations into alleged abuses by UBS in Switzerland and the smaller LGT Bank in Liechtenstein amid a widening international investigation into tax scandals involving the two banks. "The evidence we have been able to obtain breaks through some of the wall of secrecy to show that these two banks have...

Federal regulators should consider revoking the US banking license of the giant Swiss Bank UBS because of its role in helping wealthy Americans evade billions of dollars in taxes, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told ABC News today. "I don't think that any bank that goes to the extent that UBS has gone through to avoid doing what their agreements with the United States require them to do, should be allowed to continue to do business unless they clean up their act," Levin said. UBS's role in arranging "undeclared" accounts for an estimated 19,000 US citizens was one focus of a...

Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme. The bank clerk, Heinrich Kieber, has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country's bank secrecy laws. He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators....

This is the first in a series of three articles on how your pockets are being shamelessly picked by government and big business.I bet you knew the IRS was robbing you. You just didn't know how much. Read on. Are you a middle-class retiree living here on our little sandbar with money in an IRA? The IRA is supposed to give you a break by allowing you to put money away tax-free, allow it to grow, and then tax you when you withdraw it. Sounds good, doesn't it? You're getting robbed. You're not the one benefitting by it as much...

<p>A DEFIANT Paul Hogan had a typically plain-spoken and blunt message for the Australian Taxation Office yesterday: "Come and get me, you miserable bastards."</p> <p>As the ATO enlisted the help of the Internal Revenue Service in the US to pursue the actor for allegedly undisclosed tax liabilities, a bemused Hogan insisted he had paid more than enough tax - a figure he estimated to be in excess of $100million - in Australia.</p>

IRS officials are asking people who plan on attending family get-togethers over the Fourth of July weekend to be on the lookout for relatives who received economic stimulus checks. "The July 4 holiday is a perfect opportunity to encourage family and friends to reach out to those who may not have heard about the stimulus payment," said Christopher Miller, IRS spokesman in Milwaukee. Miller said there are 77,000 disabled veterans and retired people in Wisconsin, including 4,242 in Dane County, who have not filed tax returns, a necessary step in getting a stimulus check. But many residents aren't required to...

The New York Times has broken the story that Bill Keller, founder of Liveprayer.com with over 2.4 million subscribers to his Daily Devotional and host of the Liveprayer TV program, is under investigation for possibly violating his tax exempt status in speaking out last year against former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon beliefs. Keller, who was the first Christian leader to speak out nationally against Romney's beliefs coined the now infamous phrase, "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan." Keller maintains that he has done nothing to violate his tax exemption status and says his attorneys are...

The IRS plans to raise the amount of automobile mileage that businesses are allowed to claim. The IRS made the addition to help assist businesses and charities struggling with high gas prices. Business vehicles will now be able to claim operating costs of 58.5 cents for the last six months in 2008--up from last year’s deduction level of 50.5 cents. In an interview with the Associated Press, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said, "Rising gas prices are having a major impact on individual Americans. Given the increase in prices, the IRS is adjusting the standard mileage rates to better reflect the...