Free Republic

They rehire people fired for snooping, they allow pretty much anyone into facilities and restricted areas where all our sensitive information is kept, and there’s no telling how many unauthorized current and former employees are able to steal identities as a result. And, you thought they just ruined people’s lives with audits. That’s novice stuff. This is the IRS. I have personal experience with this. I had a fraudulent tax return filed under my Social Security number in 2012. As a result, both my refunds from 2012 and 2013 were put under administrative hold or some such nonsense with no...

A recently translated ancient Egyptian tax receipt shows a bill that is (literally) heavier than any American taxpayer will pay this year — more than 220 lbs. (100 kilograms) of coins. Written in Greek on a piece of pottery, the receipt states that a person (the name is unreadable) and his friends paid a land-transfer tax that came to 75 "talents" (a unit of currency), with a 15-talent charge added on. The tax was paid in coins and was delivered to a public bank in a city called Diospolis Magna (also known as Luxor or Thebes). But just how much...

Federal employees owed more in delinquent taxes last year than any year in the past decade, costing the Internal Revenue Service $1.4 billion in 2014. The 113,805 civilian government employees who declined to pay all of their taxes last year would be ineligible to work for federal agencies under a House bill introduced last week that would hold officials accountable for evading taxes. ... It is disconcerting that federal civilian employees owe more than one billion dollars in back taxes," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "These employees are not exempt from...

Weeks before other Republicans are expected to announce their presidential candidacies, Ted Cruz has already injected a very nasty little virus into the right-wing primary process: the ridiculous idea that the IRS should be abolished.While some have been quick to conclude this idea indicates Cruz is truly stupid, I don’t think he is. You just have to understand that the real intent of the abolish-the-IRS campaign pledge cannot be publicly stated. As The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell notes, the IRS is a cash-flow-positive agency, generating around $255 in income for every $1 assigned to it in federal funding. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities adds...

Could Lois Lerner still take a look at your tax returns on IRS computers? It sounds preposterous, but a new watchdog report says former IRS employees still have access to IRS computer systems long after they have no official business with the information. The report is by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. The GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. In the case of IRS security, the report says not well. This report cites significant deficiencies in the security of IRS financial reporting systems. Millions of Americans who are legally...

Ted Cruz is set to announce is candidacy for President of the United States. Rand Paul is apparently going to announce early next month before going on a campaign tour. Until today technically the only candidate was Jeb Bush, who announced late last year his intentions. At the time everyone thought that Bush was going to force everyone else to declare their candidacy early. It doesn’t appear that has happened, Cruz and Paul have appeared in no rush to make a formal announcement. Scott Walker, perhaps the front runner in the race, still hasn’t formally announced his candidacy and there’s...

Sorry to go so deep on a weekend, but seeing Brennan broadcast in a 22 minute interview is enough to blow the blood pressure cuff: I have never been more certain of something, yet simultaneously never able to prove it, as I am about two events. The first is that Jack Lew and the White House in 2010/2011 coordinated the DOJ attack, with Eric Holder, against political opposition using the IRS. The second event is that journalist Michael Hastings was killed by the dispatch of CIA Director John Brennan. Director John Brennan spent almost his entire formative career inside the CIA and...

The Justice Department is defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a motion to subpoena her private emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “Such action is unnecessary and inappropriate under FOIA,” DOJ officials wrote in a legal briefing filed Thursday. Officials were responding to a case launched by Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative watchdog group Freedom Watch. Klayman is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to subpoena Clinton’s computer server where she housed the private email address she used while serving in the State Department. Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of...

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday expanded relief to Obamacare customers who are filing tax returns based on incorrect information about their health plans. The relief came in reaction to the disclosure by federal health official there were more errors on tax-related forms sent to Obamacare enrollees beyond the 820,000 forms identified as having problems last month. Between 3 and 4 percent of customers of HealthCare.gov, the federal Obamacare marketplace, have some kind of errors on 1095-A tax forms related to their account, according to marketplace CEO Kevin Counihan. The errors could affect the amount of money a taxpayer owes...

The Obama administration announced Friday that 80,000 corrected tax forms for people on plans through ObamaCare have still not gone out. It's unclear how many people will be affected by the delay, but the administration said people who have not received the corrected forms do not have to wait to file their taxes and will not have to pay any additional tax due to the effort. The issues stem from the announcement last month that 800,000 people on insurance plans through ObamaCare received incorrect tax information. At the time, the administration said forms with corrected information would be sent out...

How would you like seeing gun-toting IRS Agents at your door? In comparison, a correspondence audit doesn’t sound so bad. Only the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS gets to carry guns, and they say they need them. The IRS has a hard job to do, and being charged with collecting taxes isn’t easy. Yet some people are extra worried about having this already very powerful organization waving weapons around. For one thing, even this elite unit doesn’t have a perfect safety record. According to one government audit, IRS Agents accidentally discharged their guns 11 times between 2009 and 2011....

The IRS sometimes uses old software without key security patches that leave its computer systems vulnerable and could endanger taxpayers’ private information, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday. GAO investigators raised the issue last year, identifying 69 weaknesses. The IRS said it had corrected two dozen of them, but the new audit found just 14 of them were actually fixed, leaving dozens of weaknesses still to be resolved. Part of the problem is that the IRS hasn’t even always followed its own guidelines for assessing risks and creating information security plans, the GAO said.

Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) bucked the Obama administration and expressed doubt about administration concessions to the Iranians. Other Democrats could join him But almost immediately after weighing in on Iran, Menendez found himself the target of a federal investigation into purported corruption Meanwhile, the aforementioned Hillary Clinton is bogged down in another trademark Clinton scandal. Clinton never used a standard government e-mail account while secretary. And rather than submitting her actual e-mails to the State Department back in December, Clinton submitted 55,000 printed pages of e-mails — making it much harder for those e-mails to be searched. Obama’s own...

If you're being audited by the Internal Revenue Service this year, you're either an unlucky or extremely unfortunate individual. Budget cuts have steadily decreased the number of IRS audits from 1.4 million in 2013 to 1.2 million last year. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told reporters in January that the number of audits would fall again this year after continued belt-tightening. With the IRS budget falling 17% in the past five years, the number of audits this year is expected to hover around 1 million. Koskinen noted that his agency has left an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion on the...

Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia appointed by President Obama and set to step down next month, has not acted on a contempt of Congress charge for former IRS official Lois Lerner. Machen, who announced at the beginning of the week he'd step down April 1 to return to private practice, has not referred Lerner's case to a grand jury. Her contempt citation for not testifying at two hearings has been in Machen's hands since May 2014. During Machen's five-year tenure as a top prosecutor, the largest U.S. Attorney's Office was dominated by cases related to...

In a new interview with Playboy, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder of "playing the race card" and said that he could "go on for hours" about all of the ways Obama has "undone" the work of President George W. Bush.Although the article claims that Cheney's "preoccupations revolve around the books in his study and the purchase of just the right gifts for his grandchildren," it sounds more like he's kind of obsessed with Obama. Calling him "the worst president in my lifetime," Cheney said his criticism of Obama and Holder has nothing...

'Wait you're pregnant? I'm sorry, this is a scam': Con artist cold-caller has attack of guilt when victim reveals she's expecting A con artist who told woman she was being convicted of tax fraud seemingly had an attack of guilt after finding out she was pregnant. Sarah Carr, who owns three event venue businesses in Denver, Colorado, told 9News that she received a voicemail on her cell phone from a man who claimed to be from the IRS. Ms Carr said she she rang the number back and broke down in tears at the news at 8am on Tuesday morning....

The IRS is unable to answer most taxpayers’ calls this year because it’s had to put money into getting up and running for Obamacare, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.Mr. Koskinen said his agency has had to shift tens of millions of dollars from customer service over to build the computer systems and get ready to handle questions this year about Obamacare and the law’s tax penalty, which kicks in for the first time this year.

No, the title of this article is not hyperbole and yes, the title is accurate. The IRS sometimes has their agents pose as clergymen to deceive church parishioners in attempts to gain information from them surreptitiously. I kid you not. Reverend Patrick Mahoney is the Director for the Christian Defense Coalition and he told the Christian Post that, “It is an absolute disgrace that IRS undercover agents can pose as members of the clergy. It is the role of government to protect religious freedom and the First Amendment, and not to use it to gather information and spy on American...

Memo Reveals Plan of U.S.-Funded Groups to Influence the Israeli Elections Nonprofits targeting populations, such as Arab Israelis, opposed to Likud BY: Alana Goodman - The Free Beacon February 5, 2015 3:30 pm http://freebeacon.com/issues/u-s-groups-funding-liberal-gotv-effort-in-israel/ [For copy of the memo: http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/APDF-GOTV-Arab-Community-MK-12-17-14.docx1-1.pdf http://bit.ly/1DMu8RV http://bit.ly/1AzUEzP http://bit.ly/1FebGCF http://bit.ly/1zo2zOR ] A coalition of U.S.-funded progressive groups has planned a massive get-out-the-vote effort to influence the Israeli elections, targeting communities that are most likely to vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-leaning Likud Party, according to a confidential strategy memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The U.S.-based 501(c)(3) group Ameinu sent out the...