Free Republic

The IRS official chosen to lead the new "centralized office" featuring the nearly 87,000 new employees funded in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act was involved in the agency's targeting of conservative groups that opposed Barack Obama's reelection in 2012. Nikole Flax served as the chief of staff for then acting IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller, who was fired amid a cover-up of the scandal. When Republican lawmakers sought communications related to the scandal in an investigation, Flax's emails were among those the agency claimed were lost in a computer hard-drive crash. The IRS, the lawmakers charged, was attempting to "cover up...

President Donald Trump is scoffing at Democrats’ attempts to pry loose his tax returns, saying his refusal to release the records as a candidate didn’t hurt him in 2016 and voters “didn’t care” about the issue. A leading House Democrat has issued subpoenas for six years of Trump’s tax documents and given Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig a deadline of this coming Friday to deliver them. […] The subpoenas came from Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Friday, days after Mnuchin refused to comply with demands to turn over Trump’s...

Rettig will take over from Trump Treasury official David Kautter, who has been running the IRS on an interim basis since the departure last fall of John Koskinen, an Obama appointee who was despised by Republicans. In confirmation hearings, Rettig said that his overriding goal would be to restore confidence in the IRS, which has for years been the objection of conservative suspicion and faced significant budget cuts. Rettig will be tasked with implementing the new tax law passed by Republicans and signed into law by Trump in December. The IRS was afforded a modest increase in funding this spring...