Free Republic

My first-ever vanity post... After some amount of web-surfing, it sounds like the IRS is claiming that processing tax returns and issuing refunds may be expected to take longer than normal. They blame this variously on a long-ago shutdown , Obamacare, and lack of funding. So I'm soliciting actual FReeper experiences with 2014 tax refunds and how long it took to get them. If you filed and received your refund, I'd be interested to know roughly when you filed and how long it took. If you filed and HAVEN'T yet received a refund, same thing. Full disclosure: I e-filed last...

- 12:02 PM Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen said that a future goal of the agency is for taxpayers to have an account at the IRS and for taxpayers “to have a more complete online experience for all their transactions with the IRS.” “The IRS needs to do more and take a different approach and one that doesn’t just rely on resources,” said the commissioner, speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. “We need to be looking forward to a new, improved way of doing business,” he said. “This involves looking into the future in...

“I did not serve three combat tours in Iraq only to come home and be extorted,” Andrew Clyde, a US Navy veteran, told an oddly united House Ways and Means subcommittee in a February hearing. Clyde is now a gun store owner near Athens, Georgia, a college town located roughly 70 miles outside of Atlanta. He told members of the subcommittee about his experience with the Internal Revenue Service, which seized $950,000 from his business’ bank account in April of 2013 through civil asset forfeiture. The Bank Secrecy Act requires financial institutions to report cash deposits over $10,000 to the...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday that he wants everyone in the near future to do their taxes online, through a government account that people would set up through the tax collection agency. “The idea is that taxpayers would have an account at the IRS where they or their preparers can log in securely, get all the information about their account, and interact with the IRS as needed,” he said at a National Press Club speech in Washington. “Most things that taxpayers need to do to fulfill their obligations could be done virtually, and there would be much less need...

At almost the same time last week that the outgoing U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald Machen, gave Lois Lerner a get-out-of-jail free card over her contempt of Congress citation, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service suffered a huge procedural loss in a court fight in Ohio. In litigation filed in 2013 by conservative organizations targeted by Lerner and her colleagues at the IRS, a federal judge granted a motion to compel and ordered the IRS to produce the names of the 298 targeted organizations identified by the IRS for the Treasury Inspector General. In 2013,...

Leftists are now openly asking the IRS to once again threaten the tax exempt status of a non-profit. This time it is Liberty University. Recently, Senator Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States on twitter. This was the first time twitter was used for such an announcement. This was historic in of itself. Later that day, the Senator’s first public speech after his announcement was at Liberty University. President Falwell of Liberty University clearly stated that Cruz’s appearance was not an endorsement of his candidacy. This is in keeping with university tradition as well as...

On March 31, Ronald Machen, the outgoing U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote House Speaker John Boehner to inform him that the Justice Department would not present Lois Lerner’s contempt citation to a federal grand jury. The letter explaining his decision is an exercise in misdirection—the kind of misdirection that magicians use to fool an audience. Why? Because at no point in his detailed, seven-page legal analysis does Machen mention the most important point demonstrating that Lerner did, in fact, waive her Fifth Amendment right.

Scandal: The Justice Department says Lois Lerner, who used her IRS office to target the Tea Party, didn't waive her Fifth Amendment rights before Congress and won't be prosecuted for contempt over her missing emails. Until former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is called to testify under oath before Congress about her multiple private email accounts on a personal server kept in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, she won't get a chance to plead the Fifth Amendment as former IRS official Lois Lerner did in May 2013 before the House Oversight Committee regarding her division's targeting of Tea Party groups.

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This week the Justice Department announced it would not charge former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner with contempt of Congress. Some members of Congress requested that Lerner be charged with contempt after she refused to testify at a congressional hearing investigating her role in denying or delaying the applications for tax-exempt status of "tea party" and pro-limited government organizations. Cynics might suggest it is not surprising that a former government official would avoid prosecution for refusing to tell Congress about how federal employees abused their power to help the incumbent administration. These cynics have a point, but the...

A Supreme Court ruling against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, according to conventional Beltway wisdom, will create serious political problems for governors and legislators in the 34 states that declined to set up Obamacare insurance exchanges. Most of these officials are Republicans, the thinking goes, and will thus be blamed for letting petty partisanship deprive their constituents of subsidies while plunging state insurance markets into chaos. Public wrath, we are told, will eventually force them to create PPACA exchanges. However, a new voter survey conducted in the affected states suggests that this is very unlikely to occur. According...

A federal judge has ordered the IRS to hand over a list of 298 Tea Party groups that were targeted by Obama the IRS for extra scrutiny in an effort to keep them from working against Obama in the 2012 election. This is an important development since the Tea Party groups are looking to be certified for a class action suit. That in itself is a big development for the groups but more importantly, once they are granted class action status, they can begin to ask for large quantities of emails, files and other evidence during the discovery phase.

Ted Cruz vows to repeal “every word” of Obamacare and Common Core if he becomes president. He would “abolish” the IRS, flatten the Tax Code so Americans can fill out their taxes on a postcard, and “finally, finally, finally” secure the border. To which Lindsey Graham says: not going to happen.

I have said it before -- the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service is institutionally incapable of self-correction. And, now it is even clearer that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice is incapable of holding accountable those responsible for a massive illegal targeting scheme. Even worse, its own involvement in the scandal not only means that it can’t properly investigate the IRS, it should instead be investigated for cooperating with the IRS in its campaign of censorship and oppression. The latest troubling development comes as the Justice Department announced it will not pursue criminal contempt charges against former top IRS official...

Lois Lerner didn’t care to speak when she was invited for tea before congressional committees, and it turns out that no charges will be filed against her over her shyness. But that may not be the end of the story for the IRS scandal. A judge in Ohio has consented to a request filed by representatives of several Tea Party groups which calls for the IRS to turn over the full list of conservative groups selected for extra special scrutiny when they filed for nonprofit status. A federal judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand over a...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is the only major Republican likely 2016 presidential candidate who hasn't weighed in on the controversy over Indiana's "religious freedom" law that erupted this week — and his explanation for avoiding the issue is questionable.

True story: The other day, I attended a speech by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who said phone scammers are swarming the country in the run-up to April 15, aka Tax Day. These criminals call taxpayers and insist they must "immediately give up their personal information or make a payment," Koskinen warned. Don't fall for it. "If you are surprised to be hearing from us, you are not hearing from us," Koskinen said. "Our way of contacting you is by letter."

Yesterday, the Department of Justice offered a curious contrast in their fight against corruption, with actions in two cases sending competing messages. Apart, each case has its own highlights, and cover very different kinds of alleged corruption. Put together, though, it seems to tell an intriguing story about how this Department of Justice views its mission, and its targets, which is the subject of my column today at The Fiscal Times: Nearly eleven months later, the Department of Justice has decided to pass on enforcing the contempt charge. Even though Lerner offered testimony in her opening statement and her...

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And who wrote those words? Some Tea Party right-winger? An anti-government libertarian? An anarchist? Nope. That was Nina Olson, the IRS' own taxpayer advocate, who in 2012 called tax code complexity the IRS' "most serious problem." So what's being done about it? Well, despite rising public anger, the IRS' union is trying to get taxpayers to pony up another $1.9 billion so conservatives can be harassed, phone calls can be ignored and automated letters can be sent to innocent people — all the while making the top 1% of earners who pay nearly 40% of all the taxes less productive...