Free Republic

The Internal Revenue Service said Monday it is ending its decades-old policy of making unannounced home and business visits, in an effort to help keep its workers safe and to combat scammers who pose as IRS agents. Effective immediately, revenue agents will no longer make unplanned visits to taxpayers’ homes and businesses “except in a few unique circumstances,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. The agency will instead mail letters to people to schedule meetings. “Today’s announcement is the right thing to do, at the right time,” new IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel told reporters on a call Monday. The...

On The Daily Show, President Obama blamed Republicans for the IRS scandal: “You’ve got this back office, and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well, it turned out, no, Congress had passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly. The truth of the matter is that there was not some big conspiracy there. They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands. You don’t want all this money pouring through non-for- profits, but you also want to make sure everybody is being...

It feels like House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has spent half of his tenure trying to pry improperly redacted information out of The Most Transparent Administration, Evah‘s obfuscating death grip. Fortunately, however, it’s a role from which Chairman Issa does not shy. At a hearing this morning with acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel, Issa grilled Werfel on the omitted documents he feels the IRS is slow-rolling the Committee on turning over, as well as the heavily redacted ones they have turned over — finally prompting Issa to assert the the agency has left him no choice...

House Ways & Means Cmte. Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) hears about the status of the Affordable Care Act from government agencies charged with implementing the health law. HHS' Insurance Oversight Dir. Gary Cohen and IRS acting chief Daniel Werfel testify. HHS & IRS Testify on Status of Affordable Care Act Hearing began at 10 am.

The House’s chief investigative committee on Tuesday accused the IRS of stonewalling its probe into the agency's unfair targeting of Tea Party groups and other politically-affiliated organizations, saying Congress has received only a fraction of the documents it requested and many of those are useless. The House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee letter directly blames acting Commissioner Danny Werfel for the “systematic manner” in which his agency has “attempted to delay, frustrate, impede and obstruct” the committee’s investigation, despite his promising just weeks earlier to fully cooperate. “The actions of the IRS under your leadership have made clear to the...

Acting IRS administrator Danny Werfel is set to appear as the lone witness on Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee to testify on his report — an update on the agency’s follow-up to an inspector general’s report concluding it inappropriately targeted tea-party groups — in which he said the agency’s discrimination was not limited to conservative organizations but occurred across the ideological spectrum. One member of the committee, who happens to be the fourth-ranking Republican in Congress, is not buying Werfel’s claims. “The IRS is in full spin mode,” Representative Peter Roskam tells National Review Online. The Illinois...

The questioning of IRS chief Daniel Werfel by the House Ways and Means Committee today began with fireworks as committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., pushed back strongly against Werfel’s claim that an internal IRS investigation has found “no wrongdoing” among IRS employees and that progressive as well as conservative groups were targeted for additional scrutiny upon applying for tax-exempt status. The attempt by Democrats to claim the IRS targeted progressive as well as conservative groups was derailed by the release of a report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration. Werfel’s claim that an IRS internal investigation...

Yesterday IRS commissioner Danny Werfel told reporters the agency’s “Be on the lookout” list included not just conservative groups but progressive groups as well. Werfel also told reporters the IRS did not find evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the agency. Yet, this is not accurate. The Inspector General report in May already confirmed that the agency was inappropriately targeting “conservative” groups. What Werfel did not disclose was that the IRS list allowed “progressive” groups to be approved on the spot while agents were told to send conservative applications to Washington DC. Eliana Johnson at The Corner reported: Acting...

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday chose a White House budget official to lead the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service temporarily and vowed to ensure that the tax-collection agency will not single out any more groups based on their political beliefs. Danny Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget who served as a point man on the controversial automatic spending cuts known as "sequestration," will start in the new post on May 22. ---snip--- 'SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN' On Capitol Hill, the scandal seemed to rewind the clock to 2009 and 2010, when groups aligned with the conservative Tea...