IRS Scandal explodes. "no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution."

[Gonad the Barbarian]

my vocabulary has just increased


explosion = "10% of tea party donors audited by IRS"

Nice to know 10% constitutes an explosion

Well it was "nearly" 10%. In other words, over 90% of the donors were not audited.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Average audit rate is 1%...not 10%

 

[thraashman]

Average audit rate is 1%...not 10%

And what's the audit rate of individuals who claim tax deductions for donations to political groups? I'd bet it's over 1% by a good bit.

 

[Blackjack200]

And what's the audit rate of individuals who claim tax deductions for donations to political groups? I'd bet it's over 1% by a good bit.

That's exactly the right question to ask.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

That's exactly the right question to ask.

And I would like to know the answer...hopefully you do too.

 

[CitizenKain]

I think its funny that investigating groups most likely to lie on their filings is apparently bad.

 

[PokerGuy]

my vocabulary has just increased


explosion = "10% of tea party donors audited by IRS"

Nice to know 10% constitutes an explosion

It is obvious from your posts that you're not the brightest bulb, but even someone like you should be able to understand that the number 10% without context means nothing. If the normal audit rate is 1%, and among this group 10% gets audited for political reasons, that's a huge deal. At this point, it's just not clear if that's the case at all though, at this point, all we've been told is that the donors were audited at a higher rate than the rest of the population. That, by itself, doesn't mean anything.

 

[werepossum]

And what's the audit rate of individuals who claim tax deductions for donations to political groups? I'd bet it's over 1% by a good bit.

It would almost have to be. Major donors aren't going to be filing the short form, which I'm assuming would really drive down the average rate.

 

[PokerGuy]

Well it was "nearly" 10%. In other words, over 90% of the donors were not audited.

See my post above -- whether 90% were unaudited is completely irrelevant.

 

[Oldgamer]

I don't have to read the OP's article, to know that the Repubs can't spin the ACA anymore and carry on about "Obamacare", so now they turn to this as a last ditch effort to make a stink and keep this things going. There is absolutely no evidence that the IRS targeted specifically Republicans or Teaparty people alone, they went after both sides, the Progressives and the conservatives. The Repubs are going to end up falling flat on their face with this just like they did with the ACA.

It is such an obvious "Witchhunt" and big Dog and Pony Show. This is to keep it in the spot light and let those who follow them in their base keep beating their war drums.

 

[PokerGuy]

I think its funny that investigating groups most likely to lie on their filings is apparently bad.

1) these are not "groups", these are individuals.
2) define "most likely to lie on their filings" -- based on what exactly?

We don't know if this was a politically biased process at all yet. My guess at this point is "no", but given how the IRS acted with the tea party groups, there's surely a possibility this was politically motivated.

 

[PokerGuy]

There is absolutely no evidence that the IRS targeted specifically Republicans or Teaparty people alone, they went after both sides

That's just flat out wrong. The IRS itself admitted inappropriately targeting conservative groups. I don't know if that's the case here (not enough information yet), but it sure was with the prior issue of them targeting tea party groups.

 

[fskimospy]

And I would like to know the answer...hopefully you do too.

I would also like to know a number of other things, like how many donors are on those lists total, how many people were present across multiple lists, etc.

It's quite easy to lie with statistics, and random numbers without context should make anyone wary.

 

[infoiltrator]

Given Teaparty antitaxation rhetoric, who cares? Audit looks for discrepancies. Or sometimes not, got called in once by IRS for no reason anyone could explain.
Government is not nor ever will be entirely sane or perfect, people are not built that way.
Think about various bosses and coworkers, think of them in charge, omg.

 

[Jhhnn]

It is problematic with the IRS admittedly keeping donor lists and passing donor lists to proggie groups, but it's not necessarily evidence of more wrongdoing.

Damn. Just can't stop yourself from presenting accusations & fabrications as fact, can you?

The National Organization for Marriage has alleged that the IRS intentionally leaked its 2008 tax return, including donor lists — an act prohibited by federal law.[73][74][75] In a lawsuit filed on May 15, 2013, NOM alleged that, in the words of chairman John C. Eastman, "This wasn't a low-level error in judgment; it was a conscious act to reward a prominent Obama supporter while punishing an opponent."[76][77] However, former NOM chairwoman Maggie Gallagher stated on May 10, 2013, that an IRS employee had been duped into releasing the documents by someone who fraudulently claimed to work for NOM.[78] However, she later stated that that was "only a theory", and that she believed the matter needs further investigation.

During the period in which the applications were being scrutinized, the Cincinnati office of the IRS violated policy by releasing nine confidential pending applications from conservative groups to ProPublica, an investigative reporting organization.[20] ProPublica had made a records request to the office seeking only completed applications, which are public information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_IRS_scandal#Allegations_of_document_leaks

http://www.propublica.org/article/i...ed-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs

The latter apparently did not include donor lists.

 

[Oldgamer]

That's just flat out wrong. The IRS itself admitted inappropriately targeting conservative groups. I don't know if that's the case here (not enough information yet), but it sure was with the prior issue of them targeting tea party groups.

No they were found to have targeted both, and said so in the hearings. I love how your trying so hard to spin this.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I would also like to know a number of other things, like how many donors are on those lists total, how many people were present across multiple lists, etc.

It's quite easy to lie with statistics, and random numbers without context should make anyone wary.

Agree and I'm fully open to the possibility of no foul play. I just want to know whether or not there's a rational explanation for this because a 10:1 ratio is crazy unless all those donors targeted for IRS audits have incomes greater than $1,000,000.

 

[PokerGuy]

No they were found to have targeted both, and said so in the hearings. I love how your trying so hard to spin this.

Wrong. While there were a small number of lib groups also caught up in the net, the impact was undeniably on the conservative groups. I don't know why you'd even try to argue this, the IRS admitted to it. The only question was really at what level the decisions were made and who was aware etc. The fact that conservative groups were inappropriately targeted is not in dispute.

 

[Thebobo]

rage

 

[PokerGuy]

I would also like to know a number of other things, like how many donors are on those lists total, how many people were present across multiple lists, etc.

It's quite easy to lie with statistics, and random numbers without context should make anyone wary.

I agree, I haven't seen any convincing evidence of wrongdoing in this case, and the 10% number, even if true isn't evidence of wrongdoing.

I also would not be quick to just dismiss this as conspiracy nuts, given how those 'conspiracy nuts' were in fact right that tea party groups had been in appropriately targeted before.

 

[werepossum]

Damn. Just can't stop yourself from presenting accusations & fabrications as fact, can you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_IRS_scandal#Allegations_of_document_leaks

http://www.propublica.org/article/i...ed-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs

The latter apparently did not include donor lists.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362667/investigation-ids-irs-leaker-eliana-johnson

A House committee investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of right-leaning groups has identified the IRS agent who leaked the confidential donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative organization that opposes gay marriage. NOM’s donor list, contained in a Form 990 Schedule B, which it is required by law to file with the IRS, was obtained in March 2012 by its chief political opponent, the Human Rights Campaign, and subsequently became the subject of several national news stories that centered on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s donation to the group.

Though the House Ways and Means Committee, which began investigating the scandal in the wake of revelations that the IRS had inappropriately singled out conservative groups, has identified the individual who divulged the information as an employee in the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, it can’t divulge his name to the public or to NOM. It can’t even confirm when the leak took place, whether the perpetrator was disciplined, or even whether he is still employed by the IRS or the U.S. government. That’s because of a peculiarity of the Internal Revenue Code’s section 6103, which is intended to protect the confidentiality of taxpayer information. The law makes it a felony to disclose tax returns or related information to the public, but in an odd twist, the results of investigations conducted by congressional committees or by inspectors general are considered the confidential tax information of the alleged perpetrator.

Having committed a felony by disclosing NOM’s donor list, the perpetrator is protected by the same law he broke. “I am astounded at the ease by which an individual was able to obtain and release confidential information including private citizens’ names and addresses,” House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) tells National Review Online. “What makes the situation even worse is that the law, intended to protect taxpayers, is being used as a shield for those that perpetrate this wrongdoing.”

Camp’s panel, nonetheless, has pieced together the NOM case and tells NRO that an IRS agent working in the Exempt Organizations Division — the same division that, until May, was under the direction of Lois Lerner, who retired under duress last month — leaked NOM’s Schedule B to Matthew Meisel, a former employee of Bain & Company, the management consultancy where former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney worked in the 1970s and 1980s and where he served as interim CEO in the early 1990s. Between his stints there, Romney founded the private-equity firm Bain Capital in 1984. After he obtained NOM’s donor list from the IRS employee, the committee says, Meisel then turned it over to the Human Rights Campaign. Neither Meisel nor the Human Rights Campaign returned calls seeking comment.

NOM’s confidential Schedule B was cited and posted publicly in a March 30, 2012, report on the Huffington Post and quickly spread to outlets including the Daily Beast and New York magazine. The emergence of Meisel, a 2007 graduate of Harvard University, and his connection to Romney’s firm may shed light on the motivation behind the leak, which was used to hammer Romney for supporting California’s Proposition 8.

In the midst of the presidential election, the Huffington Post cited NOM’s donor list, which it had obtained from the Human Rights Campaign, in a story arguing that Romney, through his super PAC, had donated thousands of dollars to NOM just weeks before California voters went to the polls for a referendum on Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the state. Though Romney had made no secret of his opposition to gay marriage, the Huffington Post said that by making the donation through his PAC, he had taken pains to conceal his financial backing of the controversial initiative. (All of the PAC’s expenditures and donations were publicly available information.)

The document leaked by the anonymous IRS employee contained the names and addresses of all those who gave money to NOM in 2007. In testimony before Congress, NOM chairman John Eastman accused the IRS of publicizing the list “to facilitate the intimidation of donors.” He talks of a “campaign of harassment and intimidation” against the organization’s financial backers that has included boycotts of their business, physical assault, and the vandalizing of private property.

Now, he tells me, “A number of donors are concerned about their names being disclosed.” He said in his testimony that the harassment “has now pervaded across the nation every time our donor list is disclosed to the point that our donors tell us ‘We are fearful of giving money to you to help support the cause that we believe in because our businesses and our family are at risk.’”

The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1958 case National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama that organizations like NOM have the right to keep their membership and donor lists private. Alabama, after seeking to banish the NAACP from the state, demanded a list of the group’s members, including their names and addresses. The Court ruled that forcing private groups to disclose that information interfered with their ability to “pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate feely with others” and violated the Fourteenth Amendment. “It may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure,” wrote Justice John Marshall Harlan.

Eastman, in this case, is calling for more from the government: He wants the Department of Justice to prosecute both the unnamed IRS leaker and Meisel, the recipient of the leaked documents. “This should be a relatively simple matter,” he says. Also a professor of constitutional law, Eastman is point-blank. As if reading from the statute itself, he tells me, “Any person who inspects or discloses a tax return and knowingly is not authorized to have it is guilty of a felony, and we expect the Department of Justice to seek an indictment.” Only if Eric Holder’s DOJ does take up the case will the veil of privacy and the protection afforded by section 6103 be lifted.

Thank you for willingly being the voice of stupid in virtually every thread.

 

[thraashman]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362667/investigation-ids-irs-leaker-eliana-johnson


Thank you for willingly being the voice of stupid in virtually every thread.

If we're being honest here. Does anyone really believe that if you make a political donation that it should even legally be allowed to be anonymous? I think if you choose to donate money to politics, it's automatically becoming public and that information should be publicly available. The only reason I can imagine for someone being ok with keeping this information secret is if that person is ok with buying politicians.

 

[nehalem256]

If we're being honest here. Does anyone really believe that if you make a political donation that it should even legally be allowed to be anonymous? I think if you choose to donate money to politics, it's automatically becoming public and that information should be publicly available. The only reason I can imagine for someone being ok with keeping this information secret is if that person is ok with buying politicians.

Or if you are afraid that liberals will try and get your fired 6 years later for making a donation to a cause that later becomes unpopular :whiste:

 

[cyclohexane]

And what's the audit rate of individuals who claim tax deductions for donations to political groups? I'd bet it's over 1% by a good bit.

Don't you see, these questions are too complex for tea party guys to think about! Therefore, stop bringing up the facts!

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I'm shocked, shocked, that the organization responsible for collecting taxes would look more intensely at those who had donated to groups that were outspoken in their opposition to taxation. Profiling is wrong, but are we really surprised when it happens? Stereotypes are a real time-saver.