Paul L. Caron
Dean





Saturday, October 15, 2016

The IRS Scandal, Day 1255

IRS Logo 2Government Executive, White House Accused of Bypassing Rules on Access to Taxpayer Information:

In the latest in a long effort to prove White House interference with the Internal Revenue Service, the right-leaning legal group Cause of Action Institute released a 67-page investigative report saying President Obama has “circumvented the congressionally created and authorized procedures for accessing confidential taxpayer information.”

Writing in the context of the three-year-old political controversy over alleged political “targeting” by the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division, Cause of Action explored “recent IRS misuse and unauthorized release of confidential taxpayer information and the possible role of a detailee program in the Office of the White House Counsel that may have provided access to the protected information.”

The report cites two examples of alleged political abuse of private taxpayer information. One involved a 2010 charge that then-Obama Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee in a call with reporters questioned the sufficiency of taxes paid by Koch Industries, news of which launched an inspectors general probe (never released) into whether the Kansas businessmen’s tax returns were reviewed at the White House.

A second example the legal group cited was a November 2012 instance in which the IRS allegedly gave the journalism group ProPublica “confidential application files of certain conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.”

The Obama team allegedly accomplished the interference by “relying on individual consent forms that were never intended for use by the president,” Cause of Action wrote. “The practice has allowed the president to avoid the reporting requirements and limitations placed on presidential access to taxpayer information by the Tax Reform Act of 1976.”

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/10/the-irs-scandal-day-1255-1.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments

We found out from the Hillary email scandals that Obama uses an alias when communicating with his agencies.

When the IRS claimed they searched for contact between the IRS and the White House, did they look for aliases and private email accounts? Nope.

Posted by: wodun | Oct 15, 2016 5:07:02 PM

"I taught Constitutional law, I know a little bit about this. I get it." - President Obama, Jan. 5, 2016

Maybe the President should take some remedial classes in Constitutional law, specifically regarding the 4th Amendment, and for added measure brush up on the IRS Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Perhaps he could also pass along his newfound knowledge on these matters to Lois Lerner...

Posted by: MM | Oct 15, 2016 4:24:32 PM