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Paul L. Caron
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Thursday, September 4, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 483

IRS Logo 2Wall Street Journal editorial:  Tax Collectors in the Cafeteria: The IRS Doesn't Like the Way Silicon Valley Does Lunch:

Having harassed the Tea Party for years, the Internal Revenue Service is now targeting Silicon Valley. The tax collectors are offended by the practice, common in the technology industry, of providing meals to employees without counting the food as taxable compensation. ...

[L]ast week the Treasury published the annual list of IRS priorities and ominously included a plan for new guidance "regarding employer-provided meals." As a large bureaucracy, the IRS has no fewer than 317 such projects on its priority list. In this case they seem to mean it. The Journal reports that IRS auditors are now flagging the issue and demanding back taxes from companies amounting to 30% of the meals' fair-market value, according to lawyers for the firms.

You don't have to be a software programmer to think that the IRS ought to focus on other priorities. For example, not one of the 317 projects is devoted to accurate and complete disclosure of the agency's role in targeting the President's philosophical opponents.

 

The order from U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan was certainly clear enough. In a landmark victory for Judicial Watch, the federal judge ordered the IRS to submit sworn declarations detailing what happened to Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and what steps were being taken to find them. What was provided was a garbled explanation from no less than five IRS officials with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. ...

These sworn declarations came from five IRS officials: Aaron G. Signor, John H. Minsek, Stephen L. Manning, Timothy P. Camus, and Thomas J. Kane.

We noted that the IRS and DOJ filings seem to treat as a joke Judge Sullivan’s order requiring the IRS to produce details about Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and any efforts to retrieve and produce them to Judicial Watch as required under law.

This is the story we’re supposed to believe, according to these IRS officials: Lerner’s crashed drive was analyzed by two technicians who employed a variety of tech tactics to recover the data, to no avail. The drives – which, mind you, had no recoverable data according to these experts – were then “degaussed” (wiped clean) “to protect against any possible disclosure of… taxpayer information.” Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the IRS email scandal would have realized that these filings were a blatant continuation of the cover-up.

Well, if there’s one thing I know, it is that most federal courts don’t take kindly to being treated disrespectfully and expected to act like a somnolent member of Congress as administration officials mislead, omit, and play games.

Sure enough, in a stunning move, Judge Sullivan took the extraordinary step of launching an independent inquiry into the issue of Lerner’s missing emails. ...

Judicial Watch has filed hundreds of FOIA lawsuits. I have never seen this type of court action in all my 16 years at Judicial Watch.

Judge Sullivan has already authorized Judicial Watch to submit a request for limited discovery into the missing IRS records after September 10. So stay tuned for further details very soon.

Judge Sullivan took the additional step of appointing Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola to manage and assist in discussions between Judicial Watch and the IRS about how to obtain the missing records. Magistrate Facciola is an expert in e-discovery.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/09/the-irs.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments

Elmer--my thoughts exactly.

Posted by: Publius Novus | Sep 5, 2014 7:29:27 AM

Employees are taxed on all compensation, including free lunches, unless a gross income exclusion applies. Let's focus on Lois Lerner and her shenanigans. These revenue agents are only doing their jobs.

Posted by: Elmer Stoup | Sep 4, 2014 1:05:14 PM