Taxes - how it all began

It's not often that I'd share a bit of information from Accounting-Degree.org, but I thought this infographic about taxes and the IRS was pretty interesting...


Source: Accounting-Degree.org

House committee announces key findings on IRS targeting of Ohioans

An Ohio House of Representatives committee held a hearing this past week in Cincinnati to hear from tea party groups, organizations and individuals who were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service.

Interestingly, Democrat members of the committee did not attend. Rep. Mike Curtin called it "a dog and pony show."

"I don't think anyone's opposed to field hearings when they makes sense. This is a concurrent resolution that has absolutely zero impact."

While I agree with the fact that concurrent resolutions are, effectively, meaningless in their impact and only serve as a 'sense' of what our General Assembly is thinking, I can't help but wonder how many concurrent resolutions Curtin has voted for in the past.

Here is the press release announcing the key findings:

House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee Releases Key Findings of IRS Targeting of Ohioans

CINCINNATI – The Ohio House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee this week conducted a field hearing on House Concurrent Resolution 27, sponsored by Rep. Terry Johnson (R-McDermott) and Rep. Dale Mallory (D-Cincinnati) regarding the politicization of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and targeting of Ohioans.

Chairman Mike Dovilla (R-Berea) released the following statement and key findings of the House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee:

“Our committee extended an open invitation to all Ohioans who believe they were targeted by the IRS, regardless of personal political affiliation or inferred organizational association, and we are thankful many Ohioans volunteered to testify.

"Some observers have asked why we would take an Ohio House committee on the road and spend time discussing a federal agency. No one explained this better than Rep. Mallory during his sponsor testimony when he said this issue is a black eye for his region and the State of Ohio. To think that for months national news focused on Cincinnati as the focal point of abuse of government power inflicted upon ordinary citizens is troubling - and quite frankly an embarrassment to the good people of Cincinnati and our great state.

"Our Republic has a federalist form of representative government, and state legislatures must continue to play an important role in the discourse on public policy issues, including those that take place at the federal level. Our committee will continue to ensure government is accountable to hardworking Ohioans.”

Key points from testimony of Ohio residents:

· Marion Bower, the President of American PAGE, testified the IRS took an inordinate amount of time, over two years and six months, for the IRS to reach a final determination regarding their application.

· According to IRS documents submitted by Ms. Bower, in comparison to documents submitted by other groups, IRS agents were provided with much leeway in the writing of questionnaires.

· Under penalty of perjury, Ms. Bower was provided a list of activities her group could be engaged in as determined by an IRS agent, and was expected the total percentage of time and resources to add up to 100 percent. Answering honestly, one activity was listed twice, and Ms. Bower received a second questionnaire scolding her that the sum of her responses did not add up to 100 percent, forcing her to resubmit the questionnaire.

· The Ohio Christian Alliance was notified by the IRS they would be contacted within 90 days to complete their application for 501(c)3 status, it took 267 days for their organization to be contacted.

· An Ohio resident, Justin Binik-Thomas, was personally singled out in an IRS questionnaire to the Liberty Township Tea Party. Mr. Binik-Thomas had no personal, professional, or volunteer relationship with the aforementioned group and did not reside in the vicinity of the aforementioned group.

· Upon contacting the IRS Taxpayer Advocate, with a copy of the questionnaire, the Taxpayer Advocate provided two responses Mr. Binik-Thomas. The first informed Mr. Binik-Thomas that the IRS did not ask questions pertaining to individuals. The second informed Mr. Binik-Thomas that due to privacy laws the IRS could not divulge any information about questions related to Mr. Binik-Thomas.

· Tim Savaglio, Board Member of the Liberty County TEA Party, applied for tax exempt status in May 2010. Over three years later, the organization’s request is still outstanding.

· Mr. Savaglio’s organization received two questionnaires, with the first questionnaire composed of over 90 separate entries for more detailed information.

-30-

Field hearings on Ohioans targeted by the IRS

Press release:

Chairman Mike Dovilla Announces Field Hearing on Ohioans Targeted By Internal Revenue Service

State Representative Mike Dovilla (R–Berea) today announced the House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee will conduct a field hearing on Ohioans targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status based on political leanings. The committee hearing will take place on Thursday, July 25, 2013, at 1:00 p.m. at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services.

BACKGROUND:

On May 28, 2013, State Representatives Terry Johnson (R–McDermott) and Dale Mallory (D–Cincinnati) introduced House Concurrent Resolution 27 to urge the IRS to take immediate action to correct its policies and cease targeting organizations applying for tax-exempt status based on the organization's political affiliation. News reports since the introduction of H.C.R. 27 have identified numerous Ohioans who were targeted by the IRS.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Dovilla said, “The U.S. Constitution and the Ohio Constitution provide Ohioans with the right peaceably to assemble and petition their government. It is unacceptable and appalling that government personnel would seek to harass ordinary citizens and the groups which they formed in order to prevent their full participation in our democratic republic.”

FOCUS OF THE HEARING:

The hearing will focus on Ohioans who were discriminated against by the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati Field Office based on the political leanings inferred from IRS forms.

DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:

Any individual or group that wishes to testify must submit written comments for the hearing record to rep07@ohiohouse.gov. All submissions must be in either Microsoft Word or PDF. At the conclusion of the hearing process, comments from Ohioans will be submitted to the Ohio Congressional Delegation.

-30-

IRS - Tea Party scandal timeline or deleted scenes from Idiocracy?

ABC News has obtained a (leaked) copy of a timeline created for the Inspector General report on the IRS - Tea Party scandal. It's more than just a documentation of the actions taken to target tea party/patriot/conservative groups for screening before giving them tax-exempt status. It's a damning indictment of the bureaucracy of this massive government agency that has control over all Americans.

As the introduction to Appendix VII says:

"The following chart illustrates a timeline of events from Redacted through July 2012 involving the identification and processing of potential political cases. It shows that there was confusion about how to process the applications, delays in the processing of the applications, and a lack of management oversight and guidance."

The timeline references multiple acting managers, replacement of managers and supervisors, changes in personnel over a two-year period of time. What the timeline doesn't indicate is if these changes were normal movements of personnel or if they were a result of the lack of progress on reviewing the cases.

It gets a bit confusing with the titles and departments, but basically, a Determinations Unit, a Technical Unit, Rulings and Agreement, lawyers and directors were all involved. It appears the Determinations Unit asked numerous times for guidance and direction from the Technical Unit. As the issue began to get public attention, the internal actions escalated.

If you look at the September - October 2011 entries you'll see the Determinations Unit asked the Technical Unit to 'triage' the cases to see what actions the Determinations Unit should take. They did and sent back a spreadsheet. But the Determinations Unit, which was looking for a recommendation about whether to close or further develop the cases, had no idea what to do with the information on the spreadsheet because it didn't answer the question. So back to the Technical Unit they went.

By November, they all decided that "the guidance developed would not work in its present form – it was “too lawyerly” to be
useful and needed the Determinations Unit input."

Then there was this on Feb. 29, 2012 (emphasis mine):

The Director, EO, stopped any more additional information request letters from being issued on advocacy cases until new guidance was provided to the Determinations Unit. In addition, the Acting Director, Rulings and Agreements, discussed with the Determinations Unit Program Manager, about having specialists print out website information and asking the organizations to verify the information instead of asking for applicants to print out the website information.

Yes, you read that correctly. They had to tell the specialists to go to their computers, print out information from the groups' websites and then verify the information rather than mail a request asking the groups to print out their website information and mail it back to the IRS.

I had plenty to say about this in February 2012 when I first reported on the Ohio Liberty Coalition's own experience with the IRS. I especially took issue with the demand that this tea-party group predict the future.

Isn't that something you'd expect to see in the movie, Idiocracy?

In the end, it took almost the full two years to get instructions and directions clear so that the Determinations Unit, charged with actually deciding if the various applications met the proper criteria, could actually determine if the applications should be approved or denied.

Even without the "lack of oversight and guidance," how in the world did we let any agency get so big - or laws so complicated - that it takes two years just to decide something like this???

And remember - this is the taxation agency, something I'm certain our founders would never have envisioned when they used the rallying cry of 'no taxation without representation.'

And if that's not scary enough, this is the same agency that's going to oversee your compliance with Obamacare.