TaxProf Blog

Paul L. Caron
Dean





Monday, March 23, 2015

The IRS Scandal, Day 683

IRS Logo 2Forbes, Should IRS Have Guns? How About Email?, by Robert W. Wood:

How would you like seeing gun-toting IRS Agents at your door? In comparison, a correspondence audit doesn’t sound so bad. Only the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS gets to carry guns, and they say they need them. The IRS has a hard job to do, and being charged with collecting taxes isn’t easy. Yet some people are extra worried about having this already very powerful organization waving weapons around. ...

You might feel especially queasy about the IRS having guns given all the ‘smidgens of corruption’ talk of the last two years. They can’t seem to even hang on to emails. People are more disillusioned about the IRS today than in the past. With all those lost Lois Lerner emails, her hard drive crashed, and there was nothing backed up? Well, not exactly.

In Hearings of the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform on February 26, 2015, J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General, said he is investigating possible criminal activity at the IRS. The hearings also revealed the fact that investigators have recovered another 32,000 emails relating to Lois Lerner. Yet even that wasn’t the most disturbing revelation. ...

House Members were told that the IRS had not even asked for the backup tapes when the ‘hard drive crash’ excuse was first used. That contradicted the prior testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. He had testified to the effect that recovery efforts had been thorough, and that the tapes couldn’t be accessed. The IRS claims to have spent $20 million responding to congressional inquiries, producing documents and providing agency officials to testify at hearings.

It now appears that no one may have asked, which almost sounds like the Keystone Cops. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said, “It looks like we’ve been lied to, or at least misled.” Treasury Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus said, “We recovered quite a number of emails, but until we compare those to what’s already been produced we don’t know if they’re new emails.”

Mr. Camus said it took investigators only two weeks to locate the computer tapes, and about four months to find Ms. Lerner’s emails on the tapes. Several Oversight Committee Members questioned how diligent the IRS had been, given how quickly the investigators now were able to find them. Yet an IRS statement repeats the tax agency’s full cooperation. It has not been inexpensive.

With all of the controversy facing the IRS and the tax system these days, it can seem doubly scary to contemplate tax collectors being armed.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/03/the-irs--2.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments

That the IRS is now an armed criminal agency working under orders of Obama and the Democrats is not really a surprise. That there are those who DEFEND this criminal gang is really despicable.

Posted by: Andrew Russell | Mar 23, 2015 11:35:24 AM

IRS special agents are not tax collectors. They are criminal investigators. As in the criminal investigators who put Al Capone in jail. IRS' tax collectors are called "revenue officers." Revenue Officers are not armed, though they are the most frequently assaulted federal employees. Auditors are called "revenue agents." They are not armed either. Mr. Wood knows or should know this. Bottom line? Cheap shot Mr. Wood.

Posted by: Publius Novus | Mar 23, 2015 7:51:03 AM