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According to a report from the Tax Foundation, Americans spent $409 billion (2.2 percent of GDP) on tax compliance in 2016. This works out to 8.9 billion man-hours wasted preparing tax returns, which is the equivalent of roughly 4 million full time jobs. The Tax Foundation’s figure includes time spent by individuals preparing and filing their taxes, and money spent by individuals and corporations on tax services provided by accountants and lawyers. Essentially, it is wasted money. The billion dollar question: why does America waste so much money doing taxes? Because of complexity. The US Tax Code is so inordinately...

The IRS failed to adequately store, backup, and search official records for use in Freedom of Information requests and other litigation, according to a new report released by the Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration. Performing an independent audit, TIGTA found: The IRS’s current e-mail system and record retention policies do not ensure that e-mail records are saved and can be searched and retrieved for as long as needed. Additionally, repeated changes in electronic media storage policies, combined with a reliance on employees to maintain records on computer hard drives, has resulted in cases in which Federal records were lost...

The threats that former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner says are serious enough to keep her court depositions forever secret date back to 2014, and she hasn’t shown any new threats, according to new court documents filed late Thursday. Ms. Lerner and her key deputy, Holly Paz, have demanded a judge forever seal their depositions and parts of any documents that mention those depositions, saying they fear for their safety. But the harassment they point to as evidence is more than three years old and dates back to the most heated days of the debate over the IRS’s illegal...

On Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Coinbase must supply the IRS with identifying information on users who had more than $20,000 in annual transactions on its platform between 2013 and 2015. After noticing that the number of tax returns claiming gains from virtual currency didn’t line up with the emerging popularity of digital currencies like bitcoin as an investment vehicle, the IRS asked Coinbase to hand over a broad swath of information on its users. Coinbase pushed back, and now the court has landed on a compromise that the company is calling a “partial victory.” “Coinbase...

Finally, after four and a half years, harassment of conservative groups by the Obama IRS is put to rest, with the media downplaying the story. A William McGurn column in the Wall Street Journal, November 21, stated that IRS-Tea Party litigation has been settled.  A New York Times story on October 27, 2017 reported that the government, in one lawsuit involving 428 groups, "agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement" and that, in a second lawsuit comprising 41 groups, damages will not be paid, "but the I.R.S. acknowledged its conduct was wrong."  It is not clear why the matter dragged on four and a half years.  The original Times report on...

Well, isn’t that rich? Lois Lerner, who almost singlehandedly weaponized the IRS, turning into a bludgeon to be used against Tea Party and other groups in the 2012 reelection campaign of Barack Obama, now wants to be protected against threats and intimidation from the groups and people she helped threaten and intimidate: Former IRS official Lois Lerner and her deputy are asking a federal court to keep their testimonies in the Tea Party targeting case private forever, over fear of death threats and potential harm to their families if the documents go public. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz filed...

Former IRS official Lois Lerner wants her testimony on the Tea Party targeting scandal to be kept from the public's eyes. She fears for her life, both she and her deputy Holly Paz claimed in a motion filed last Thursday. “Whenever Mss. Lerner and Paz have been in the media spotlight, they have faced death threats and harassment,” the documents stated. “Returning Mss. Lerner and Paz to the media spotlight places them at risk, regardless of what they actually said in those depositions.” The documents also stated that: “Public exposure will put innocent bystanders, namely Mss. Lerner’s and Paz’s family...

Lois G. Lerner, the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit, filed court documents on Thursday requesting the sealing in perpetuity of tapes and transcripts of depositions she gave in court this year, Washington Times reports. Lerner claimed members of her family, including “young children,” have received death threats due to her role in the IRS targeting scandal, in which conservative and tea party groups had their tax-exempt status denied or delayed until after the 2012 election.

Former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner told a federal court last week that members of her family, including “young children,” face death threats and a real risk of physical harm if her explanation of the tea party targeting scandal becomes public.... Ms. Lerner and Holly Paz, her deputy at the IRS, filed documents in court Thursday saying tapes and transcripts of depositions they gave in a court case this year must remain sealed in perpetuity, or else they could spur an enraged public to retaliate.

Not everyone benefits equally from the tax legislation that House Republicans unveiled Thursday. GOP leaders toiled for weeks to decide what deductions and tax breaks should be axed to pay for the tax cuts. That means the bill creates some winners and some losers. Republicans say their plan will simplify the code and provide tax relief to middle-class families. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) repeatedly touted an example on Thursday of how a family of four earning the median American household income of $59,000 would save $1,182 a year on their taxes, using the proposed doubled standard deduction, reduced tax rate...

The new GOP tax overhaul would strip illegal immigrants of the ability to claim several major tax credits, saving the government $23.1 billion over the next decade, according to the bill’s authors. For years Republicans have complained that despite a general ban on taxpayer benefits flowing to illegal immigrants, the IRS has allowed them to collect the child tax credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Efforts to shut down those claims have been tried in the House but have never cleared Congress.

Imagine that the Trump administration was singling out left-wing groups for discrimination, repression or punishment through both the revenue and justice system. I think we can all guess what the reaction would be: foaming outrage across the media, furious editorials and op-eds, dissection of Trump’s vicious sectarian and vindictive personality and the charge that the US had turned into a fascist state. Evidence has now surfaced confirming long-held claims that the Obama administration targeted conservative groups in just this way, and then tried to cover it up. Yet the media reaction has been muted, with coverage consisting mostly of brief...

President Donald Trump has proposed what he calls "the biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan." He also wants vast simplification so that Americans can fill out their taxes on a postcard return. Let's hope that part of this reform package will be to defang the IRS, which treats Americans as if they are guilty until proven innocent and invades the basic privacy rights of citizens. Meanwhile, Trump's critics on the left seem to think the tax code is just fine the way it is. Although some, like socialist hero Bernie Sanders, want tax rates to go much higher. So as...

The IRS on Thursday settled two lawsuits alleging the agency illegally targeted conservative groups under the Obama administration. One of the settlements stipulated the IRS issue a formal apology for illegally singling out conservative and tea party groups due to their political beliefs dating back to 2013. The other settlement, a class-action lawsuit brought by the NorCal Tea Party with 428 members, includes a “generous” multi-million dollar payout, according to a lawyer involved. “There is no excuse for this conduct,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Hundreds of organizations were affected by these actions, and they deserve an...

Agreement specifically blames Lois Lerner by name for failures The IRS admitted in court Wednesday that it wrongly targeted tea party and other conservative groups for intrusive scrutiny, placing specific blame on former senior executive Lois G. Lerner, and entered into a settlement designed to make sure that kind of political targeting never takes place again. The filing, made in federal court in Washington, D.C., amounts to a stunning apology from the Trump administration for actions taken under President Barack Obama, when hundreds of tea party and conservative groups were singled out for intrusive screening, forced to wait years for...

President Trump made it official on Thursday that embattled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be out of a job next month. Trump tapped David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, to serve as interim IRS commissioner, beginning Nov. 13. Koskinen’s term ends on Nov. 12. He was eligible for reappointment, but Koskinen is fiercely opposed by congressional Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus attempted but failed to impeach Koskinen last year, largely over his handling of the scandal involving former IRS official Lois Lerner. Prior to Koskinen’s tenure, Lerner was accused targeting conservative groups who applied...

Four hundred sixty nine different plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits over Obama-era IRS harassment settled with the Department of Justice Thursday, bringing to a close a dark chapter in the IRS’s history. In 2010 and 2011, the IRS under Lois Lerner, particularly out of the Cincinnati field office, launched what many contended were politically motivated investigations and audits of “Tea Party” and other conservative groups. While no criminal prosecutions ever resulted, hundreds of victims assembled in class-action lawsuits against the federal government. Attorney General Sessions appears to have largely acknowledged the plaintiffs’ claims. In a DOJ press release on the...

Lawyers think they have finally found the smoking gun in the IRS’s tea party targeting scandal: an email from an IRS agent to her supervisors alerting them that the agency was, in fact, singling out some groups’ applications for extreme scrutiny “primarily because of their political party affiliation.” The email was released last month as part of a massive document dump in a class-action lawsuit filed in Ohio by hundreds of conservative groups who were targeted for extra review and intrusive questioning. It contradicts the IRS’s official stance over the years contending that conservative groups were wrongly scrutinized, but it...

We live in a dangerous world. For the 70,000 officers at Homeland Security and the 40,000 officers within the Department of Justice, proper training and equipment are vital to their daily law enforcement duties. Over a nearly two-year period - the last years of the Obama administration (FY2015 - FY2016), these law enforcement agencies spent $138 million on new guns and ammunition. That seems reasonable. What’s curious, however, is that traditionally administrative agencies spent more than $20 million. Four notable examples: 1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are allowed to carry AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles,...

The IRS says it will not accept electronic tax returns that do not disclose whether the filer had health insurance coverage during the year. It also says it will suspend paper returns that do not have the disclosure. The IRS' move, which will bolster compliance with Affordable Care Act rules, comes as the Trump administration takes other steps to undercut the law. The IRS is warning tax professionals that it will block or suspend processing of 2017 income tax returns that do not comply with Obamacare rules requiring filers to disclose their health insurance status. The new move to tighten...