Free Republic

The IRS is struggling to ensure that illegal immigrants are able to illegally use Social Security numbers for legitimate purposes, the agency's head told senators on Tuesday, without allowing the numbers to be used for "bad" reasons. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen made the statement in response to a question from Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., during a session of the Senate Finance Committee about why the IRS appears to be collaborating with taxpayers who file tax returns using fraudulent information. Coats said that his staff had discovered the practice after looking into agency procedures. "What we learned is that ... the...

New exhibition shows how tribe dealt with blowout last August. Navajo artist Venaya Yazzie wrote the Diné expression – Tó éí ííná – beside a photograph of a friend sullenly looking out on the tainted San Juan River in the days after the Gold King Mine spill. It means “Water is Life,” and for the indigenous tribes affected by the mine blowout in August, the words sum up months of confusion, fear and sadness surrounding the health of critical southwest waterways. On Aug. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency breached the portal of the mine north of Silverton, sending an estimated...

Nearly a third of people without health insurance, about 10 million, live in families that received a federal earned income tax credit in 2014, according to a new study. But the Internal Revenue Service doesn't tell those tax filers that their low and moderate incomes likely mean their households qualify for Medicaid or subsidies to buy coverage on the insurance exchanges. That's a lost opportunity to identify people who are eligible but not receiving government assistance to gain health coverage, the researchers say. More

Tax counsel for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday that the billionaire businessman has been under continuous IRS audit for more than a decade. In a letter released by the Trump campaign to demonstrate that the candidate is in fact under audit, Sheri Dillon and William Nelson wrote that his personal federal tax returns “have been under continuous examination by the Internal Revenue Service since 2002, consistent with the IRS’s practice for large and complex businesses.” …

The IRS’s computers remain vulnerable to hackers, the government’s top auditor said Monday, saying changes were still needed months after the agency suffered a breach that saw hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ most sensitive information stolen. Passwords to key agency systems “could be easily guessed,” and investigators from the Government Accountability Office found the IRS didn’t require regular password changes — an important part of modern cybersecurity. The tax agency also failed to load the latest security patches, ran obsolete software on systems, and granted some employees access — both physical and electronic — to systems they didn’t need to...

Tea party activists are heartened by a federal appeals court ruling that strengthens their legal push against the Internal Revenue Service for alleged targeting in past election cycles. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chastised government foot-dragging while ordering the agency to give attorneys for tea party groups details on tax-exempt applicants. A U.S. district court judge in Cincinnati earlier this year certified the case as a class action. …

Gone are the days of sophisticated tax plans offered by international accounting and law firms to their wealthiest clients which the IRS, with the benefit of hindsight, categorized as “tax shelters”. So why is Commissioner Koskinen raising the flag upside-down in a signal of distress in March of 2016? Tax practitioners all around the country know exactly why. Too many taxpayers and a handful of unscrupulous “tax practitioners” are taking advantage of the almost absolute absence of tax enforcement by the IRS. Yes, “Joe the plumber” and other average taxpayers know that no-one is minding the store. What happens when...

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, and in all likelihood will win the Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer this November. Articular, telegenic, and complimented by no less than Barack Obama for her beauty, she is ready to take her place on the bench of future presidential hopefuls. Unfortunately, she is displaying the worst instincts of a government bully. Ignoring post-Watergate reforms to the Internal Revenue Code designed to protect confidential federal tax return information, Kamala Harris is defending against three lawsuits filed by conservative organizations to protect the privacy of...

Say, do you remember that whole flap over Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting conservative groups applying for tax exempt status a couple of years ago? Good times, my friends. Good times. I’m sure glad that’s all finally behind us, aren’t you?Well guess again. It’s not even close to being over. Some of the affected groups brought suit against the IRS over the matter and that process has been dragging out for years now. They haven’t made as much ground as they might, however, because every time the plaintiffs request certain documents from the IRS, they mysteriously find reasons...

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted. The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting —...

In October 2015 the DOJ announced it was dropping the investigation into the IRS, Lois Lerner, and the unlawful sharing of taxpayer data in the IRS targeting investigation surrounding True The Vote et al.

(Video)ITIN numbers create a massive loophole with big time cash results from IRS to illegal workers. These workers can cash out as much as $29,000 and they feel they've earned it, and we just let it happen! Vote with your head! IF YOU ARE A TAXPAYER, TAKE THE TIME TO VIEW THIS VIDEO! So you think Trump's plan to send them back is crazy??? You have to see this, so outrageous. Incredible and absolutely insane. Heads need to roll. The IRS will put you in jail if you fail to pay the taxes that support this fraud. This, without a...

Millions of Americans are filing their taxes this month—and getting a good reminder of why they despise the IRS. But thanks to the Republican majority in Congress, the IRS is being forced to start cleaning up its act. When the IRS scandal broke, Congress demanded answers from the agency’s top officials. Were they targeting groups for their religious and political beliefs? No, they said, it was just a few rogue employees in Ohio—if anything at all. Well, what happened to Lois Lerner’s emails? Oh, they were lost in a tragic hard drive crash. Shouldn’t we update our laws to prevent...

All over America the people are now scrambling to gather their records and receipts so that they can comply with the nation’s Byzantine tax laws. They file, usually by either purchasing software or the services of a CPA, and hope that they first, get a refund, and second, do not get audited. If a refund is called for, American taxpayers rejoice that their benevolent benefactor has seen fit to give them back a share of what was stolen from them. The people consider it “free money.” It was… free money the feds could use while you couldn’t. In any dealings...

It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many sleepless nights for too many Americans, especially at this time of year. So, it's no wonder why Ted Cruz is promising to abolish the IRS. It's such a crucial aspect of his platform that he mentioned it twice during his Super Tuesday victory speech in Texas because, for middle-aged Republican voters, it's way better fapping material than naked pics of...

Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts Department of Homeland Security Releases Documents Showing 1,000 Individuals Removed from Terrorist Watch List Judicial Watch in Court over CongressÂ’s Obamacare Exemption Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts The Clinton email matter is important, and your JW is, of course, at the center of the story. Check out this New York Times article, which shows that the FBI and Judicial Watch are the only two entities in DC likely to get answers and accountability on the Clinton email issue: Last week Judge Emmet...

Loretta Lynch has already broken the seal on her foray into the morass of prosecutorial discretion. She dismissed the IRS investigation. Justice Department officials used "prosecutorial discretion" to shelter former IRS official Lois Lerner from a grand jury after she was held in contempt of Congress. "I believe that in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the matter was handled and was resolved," Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee. Lerner is just the beginning. The IRS dismissal, large enough on its own scale and importance, will be but a side event in this attorney general's career. For the...

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have released their tax returns for the last four years and the last five years, respectivelyThe Republican presidential candidates made the documents public as they mount attacks against front-runner Trump for not disclosing Trump is hiding up to five years-worth of his returnsTrump is being audited and said that's why the documents haven't be releasedThe audit 'makes it even more important for him to release his taxes', Cruz argued on a Sunday broadcast of 'Face The Nation' ...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) emphatically denounced the IRS this week in a Heritage Foundation speech, saying that that the agency doesn't need to be reformed, it needs to be "abolished." -snip- “As we have seen the weaponization of the IRS, as we have seen the Obama administration using the IRS in a partisan manner to punish its political enemies.”

Sen. Ted Cruz speculated Sunday that Republican presidential rival Donald Trump might be delaying the release of his tax returns because of possible ties with the mob. "Maybe it is the case that Donald, there have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia," Cruz said on "Meet the Press." "Maybe his taxes show those business dealings are a lot more extensive than has been reported," he added. Cruz repeated the suggestion on ABC's "This Week," seemingly stunning host George Stephanopoulos. "Business dealings with the mafia?" Stephanopoulos asked, incredulously.