Paul L. Caron
Dean





Monday, July 7, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 424

IRS Logo 2New York Times editorial: The Real Internal Revenue Scandal:

There is a scandal going on at the Internal Revenue Service, but it has nothing to do with Lois Lerner or her missing emails. House Republicans have not given up on their noisy crusade to tie Ms. Lerner to what they imagine to be widespread political corruption within the Obama administration, but all they have proved is that the I.R.S. is no better at backing up its computer files than most other government agencies.

No, the real scandal is what Republicans did to cripple the agency when virtually no one was looking. Since the broad Tea Party-driven spending cuts of 2010, the agency’s budget has been cut by 14 percent after inflation is considered, leading to sharply reduced staff, less enforcement of the tax laws and poor taxpayer service.

As the economist Jared Bernstein noted recently in The Washington Post, a weakened I.R.S. enforcement staff will be unable to make a dent in the $385 billion annual gap between what taxpayers owe and what they pay — an unintended tax cut, mostly for the rich, that represents 11 percent of this year’s spending.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/07/t-1.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments

Thank you so much for doing this. I read your blog everyday. I am conservative fiscally, but not socially. This scandal makes me so mad and it should make every american mad. Please keep up the great work.

Posted by: klctlc | Jul 7, 2014 8:59:01 AM