Paul L. Caron
Dean





Sunday, June 22, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 409

IRS Logo 2Tax Analysts Blog:  The Coverup Is Usually Worse Than the Crime, by Christopher Bergin:

[D]o we have a coverup at the IRS? Has a crime been committed? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am deeply disturbed by all this.

Maybe it’s just sloppy record-keeping, which would be bad enough. Most of the government’s business is now conducted digitally, and those records need to be properly handled. Or is it worse? Is the IRS deliberately keeping things from the public? Excuse my cynicism, but the IRS’s penchant for secrecy is what led Tax Analysts, using the new Freedom of Information Act, to sue the agency in the 1970s to force it to release private letter rulings. There have been several subsequent lawsuits to pry records that should have been public out of the agency’s hands. ...

[T]he real problem here is that the IRS can’t make this story go away, and that starts smelling like a coverup. I know tax professionals who are now starting to think the worst and who are having trouble getting behind the IRS. And I am one of them. ...

The exempt organization issue is now more than just fodder for conservative blogs. The IRS and the Treasury Department need to start being square with the American people and their Congress. Even if you hate the IRS -- and I do not -- a wounded and compromised tax collector (whether or not most of its wounds are self-inflicted) does no good for the country.

(Click on YouTube button on bottom right to view video directly on YouTube to avoid interruption caused by blog's refresh rate.)

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/06/the-irs-scandal-14.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments