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IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was a no show Tuesday for a House Judiciary hearing accusing him of misconduct. That didn't stop lawmakers from blasting Koskinen and calling for his impeachment. The hearing stems from a 2013 investigation into IRS official Lois Lerner. Lerner was accused of unfairly targeting conservative and tea party groups by delaying their requests for tax-exempt status. Koskinen, who was brought in by President Barack Obama after the scandal unfolded, promised to provide key evidence, including thousands of Lerner's emails to assist Congress in their investigation. Tapes obtaining those emails were destroyed. Although many of the emails...

The Inspector General for the IRS said Thursday that the tax collection agency continues to be at risk of paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent Earned Income Tax Credit payments each year, and that there's nothing the IRS can do about it. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report that said almost 25 percent of EITC payments issued last year should not have been issued. That amounts to $15.6 billion in payments under a program that's meant to boost low and moderate-income people and families.

RS Commissioner John Koskinen has declined to testify in his own defense at a congressional hearing Tuesday, but insisted in a statement that his bungling of a subpoena doesn’t rise to the level of “treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors” needed for him to be impeached. The Judiciary Committee hearing is being viewed by some House Republicans as the precursor to impeachment, with the House’s top investigator saying Mr. Koskinen defied a congressional subpoena that demanded all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails be preserved as part of the investigation into tea party targeting. But Mr. Koskinen,...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will not appear at a “misconduct” hearing Tuesday where Republicans will lay out a case to impeach him for allegedly failing to comply with a congressional subpoena, the IRS told POLITICO. Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee summoned the tax chief to answer accusations from the House Oversight panel that he failed to preserve documents Congress requested for its probe of the IRS tea party scandal. They also say he never told the full truth about erased back-up tapes containing copies of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner. Some Republicans even suspect the IRS...

Cameron Lancaster The House Judiciary Committee will consider impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in upcoming hearings. The committee will look at Koskinen's alleged misconduct relating to Congress's investigation into the IRS's targeting of political groups. “Despite repeated congressional efforts to get to the bottom of this matter, Obama Administration officials, including the IRS Commissioner, have consistently undermined the investigation," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said. "Over the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will closely examine Commissioner Koskinen’s misconduct and the implications of his actions.” At a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 24, witnesses will present the...

Despite a court preservation order, the IRS has wiped the hard drive of their former director of transfer pricing operations, Samuel Maruca. Maruca is connected to the agency’s controversial retainer of law firm Quinn Emanuel. The IRS privately contracted the litigation firm to assist in an audit of a corporate taxpayer, overlooking the firm’s lack of any experience managing sensitive tax data. The IRS has faced criticism for its decision, specifically from Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) 43% . In a letter to the IRS, Senator Hatch voiced his concern that the agency’s $2.2 million tax-payer funded contract...

The Internal Revenue Service may still be unfairly targeting conservative organizations for audit due to flaws within their interior controls, Americans for Tax Reform reported Wednesday.

The IRS recently proposed a rule to weaken the effectiveness of non-profits. Under this proposal, the IRS would give 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, which includes charities, religious groups, and educational foundations, the option to collect the social security numbers of donors giving more than $250 so that they can be sent to the IRS. While optional at the moment, it is obvious that the rule is simply a way for the IRS to transition to mandatory collection of social security numbers. This rule should frighten all Americans because it opens up a whole pandora’s box of security concerns. Additionally, the IRS...

House Republicans have moved to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, arguing he violated the public trust. Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced an impeachment resolution Tuesday, days after the Justice Department concluded its investigation into IRS targeting of Tea Party groups with no charges filed.“Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust. He failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled,” Chaffetz said in a statement. “Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress.” Much of the...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and 18 other Republicans on the committee introduced a resolution on Tuesday to start impeachment proceedings against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

The IRS targeting and muzzling of conservative groups during the 2012 presidential campaign is an outrage for which almost no one has been held accountable. Which brings us to the news that House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz is introducing articles of impeachment on Tuesday against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Mr. Koskinen was not at the IRS during the targeting, but the former Freddie Mac executive has become the single greatest hurdle to public accountability. He was touted as a reformer in his 2013 confirmation hearings. Instead he has helped the Administration stonewall Congress’s investigation. Mr. Chaffetz’s four articles of...

Does anyone remember Henry Markopolos? In case you don’t, he was the former securities industry executive who for nine years persistently, but unsuccessfully, tried to convince the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the respected securities investment firm headed by Bernie Madoff was engaged in massive long-term fraud. Fast forward to 2009 when Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history adding up to billions of dollars in client losses. In 2010, Markopolos wrote about his dramatic whistle-blower experience in a book aptly titled, “No One Would Listen: A True...

A federal judge Friday ordered the IRS to turn over the records of any requests from the White House seeking taxpayers’ private information from the tax agency, delivering a victory to a group that for two years has been trying to pry the data loose. It’s not clear that there were any such requests — but Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the IRS cannot just refuse to say so by citing taxpayer confidentiality laws, known as section 6103 of the tax code. “This court questions whether section 6103 should or would shield records that indicate confidential taxpayer information was misused,...

WASHINGTON--The Internal Revenue Service said identity thieves’ penetration of one of its computer databases was much more extensive than previously reported, with more than 300,000 taxpayer accounts potentially affected and more than 600,000 breaches attempted.

The IRS Conservative Targeting Scandal involved: â—¾Hundreds of conservative groups were targeted â—¾At least 5 pro-Israel groups â—¾Constitutional groups â—¾Groups that criticized Obama administration â—¾At least two pro-life groups â—¾An 83 year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor â—¾A 180 year-old Baptist paper â—¾A Texas voting-rights group â—¾A Hollywood conservative group was targeted and harassed â—¾Conservative activists and businesses â—¾At least one conservative Hispanic group â—¾IRS continued to target groups even after the scandal was exposed â—¾10% of Tea Party donors were audited by the IRS â—¾AndÂ… 100% of the 501(c)(4) Groups Audited by IRS Were Conservative Now thisÂ… IRS official Lois...

Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the “Media Management Midnight Unit” located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically “degaussed” despite an agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena. Degaussing is a process whereby powerful magnets are used to erase data on a storage tape. The preservation order came from IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Millholland in response to Congressional subpoenas over Lois Lerner’s emails. However, the agency completely failed to ensure...

documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)... confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS. The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations....Lois Lerner, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, is mentioned four times in the report...In 2009, Barack Obama “joked” about having the IRS...

President Obama swung by The Daily Show earlier this week and was challenged by outgoing host Jon Stewart over government incompetence on his watch. Pressed on prominent instances of malfeasance and ineptitude that have plagued the federal bureaucracy during his administration — from the VA wait list scandal, to the catastrophic OPM hack, to the IRS targeting affair — Obama breezily dismissed the latter example as a non-scandal, chalking it up to Congress writing “crummy” laws that were merely implemented “poorly and stupidly.” The Washington Times reports: President Obama defended the IRS Tuesday in an interview with “Daily Show”...

Corruption: A new batch of IRS documents shows an agency that's more political than practical. Besides harassing groups applying for nonprofit status, it went after donors of existing groups. Documents produced by the IRS confirm that being on the wrong side of this administration is a dangerous place to be. Judicial Watch, which used the Freedom of Information Act to pry the documents from the government's grasp, said Wednesday they "confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits." Among these groups was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That organization "may find itself...

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS. The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)).A letter dated September 28, 2010,...