Category Archives: Tax

May 18, 2013

Obama’s Drama: ‘What If Glenn Beck Is Right?’ (Videos)

Posted on May 18, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

During a discussion about the latest news developing on the IRS targeting conservatives scandal, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and Dana Perino echoed a sentiment recently expressed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

During a discussion about the latest news developing on the IRS targeting conservatives scandal, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and Dana Perino echoed a sentiment recently expressed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Just as Stewart said the Obama administration has vindicated conspiracy theorists, Kelly and Perino said that the IRS scandal will give people an excuse to trust Glenn Beck:

So what is Glenn Beck saying about all these recent scandals?

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Posted in Glenn Beck, Tax, Tea Parties

Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top

Posted on May 18, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do.

Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Government, Law & Courts, Tax

May 17, 2013

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

Posted on May 17, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” Cornyn, R-Texas, stated. “I do not support Obamacare, and after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.

“Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

“Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”

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Posted in Health Care, Law & Courts, Tax, Tea Parties

May 16, 2013

IRS Intimidation Forced Founder To Shut Down Tea Party Group

Posted on May 16, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The IRS scandal is growing by leaps and bounds in a way that must be terrifying to an Administration already dealing with fallout from the uncovering of their Libya lies and the knowledge that the Department of Justice seized the phone records of 20 Associated Press reporters. Tuesday morning, ABC News revealed what might have been the political motivation behind the IRS’s decision to target Tea party groups — to ensure they weren’t as effective in 2012 as they were in 2010.

In the 2010 midterms, even the media that despises the Tea Party will admit that the nationwide grassroots movement was a major factor behind record GOP electoral gains. By the time the smoke cleared, Obama had lost the House and his filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate.

Is it just a coincidence that it was only after these 2010 victories that the IRS decided to single out Tea Party groups for special scrutiny? And not just scrutiny, but the kind of scrutiny that bogged these groups down with paperwork and restricted their political activities.

The Narrative some in the media, like JournOlist founder Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, are desperate to spin is that this was a single Midwest IRS office concerned with political groups abusing a new tax exempt status. The isolation of Tea Parties was merely “discriminatory.”

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Posted in Government, Tax, Tea Parties

May 15, 2013

Progressive Group: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups’ Confidential Docs

Posted on May 15, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.

The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.

ProPublica says the documents the IRS gave them were “not supposed to be made public”:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year… In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

The group says that “no unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”

According to Media Research Center Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor, ProPublica’s financial backers include top progressive donors:

ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure”–“progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Journalism, Tax, Tea Parties

May 14, 2013

IRS Not Just After Tea Party … Megyn Kelly Exposes List of Targets (Video)

Posted on May 14, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

According to an inspector general’s report on the IRS, the practice of focusing on such groups began in early 2010 with the IRS looking into Tea Party and Patriot groups. By June of 2011, the list of those being targeted had drastically expanded and it included groups that focused on government spending, government debt and taxes.

On Monday’s America Live, Megyn Kelly probed the scandal surrounding the IRS targeting conservative groups.

According to an inspector general’s report on the IRS, the practice of focusing on such groups began in early 2010 with the IRS looking into Tea Party and Patriot groups. By June of 2011, the list of those being targeted had drastically expanded and it included groups that focused on government spending, government debt and taxes.

The IRS also wanted extra scrutiny on groups whose goals included limiting government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, anyone criticizing how the country was being run, and anyone lobbying to “make America a better place to live.”

Earlier Monday, President Obama addressed the reports, saying that if they are in fact true, they are outrageous and people will be held accountable. Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs reacted, saying, “This is an agency with an enemies list. This is Nixonian. This is a president whose inner Nixon is being revealed. This is a government that is out of control.”

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Posted in Government, Tax, Tea Parties

May 13, 2013

IRS Knew Tea Party Was Being Targeted In 2011: Report

Posted on May 13, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice,” Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La. said.



Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” `’Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck. In a statement to the AP, Beck suggested that the revelations were hardly news to him and other conservatives.

“In February 2012, TheBlaze first reported what the IRS now admits to – that they unfairly targeted conservative groups including the 9/12 project,” Beck said, citing his website and TV network. “It is nice to see everyone else playing catch-up and finally asking the same questions that TheBlaze started raising over a year ago.”

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Posted in Law & Courts, Tax, Tea Parties

May 11, 2013

England: Why are taxpayers supporting pro-immigration charities?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Look at the current immigration reform being proposed in the US, which is heavily supported by big business and by the overwhelmingly dominant liberal media. You’d think that some people on the Left would have something to say on the impact on middle and working-class jobs, and the US’s ever Latinised inequality levels, but not a peep.

Did you buy “Candle in the Wind”, Elton John’s Godawful ditty that came out during the hysteria following Princess Diana’s tragic death in 1997?

Well, if you did, then you were, bizarrely, funding Britain’s transformation into a more multicultural society, one you might well object to if you’re among the 57 per cent of people who believe immigration to be among the three most important issues facing the country, or the 25 per cent who voted Ukip in some parts. It’s a strange story, illustrative of our system.

Although in the Queen’s Speech yesterday the Government set out restrictions on immigration, and the public mood seems to be heading Right, the acceptable centre of gravity on immigration will not continue the way of Ukip. Why?

A couple of weeks back the Daily Mail ran a story about how the Princess Diana Memorial Fund had been “hijacked by Left-wingers to fund a pro-immigration propaganda campaign”. The story was somewhat swallowed up by the death of Margaret Thatcher, but it’s worth exploring in the light of Ukip’s extraordinary surge.

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Posted in Europe, Immigration, Tax

IRS Apologizes for Targeting Tea Party Groups in 2012

Posted on May 11, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

On Friday, the IRS apologized for singling out conservative groups, especially organizations that had “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names, for additional reviews during the 2012 election.

According to the Associated Press, Lois Lerner, who “heads the IRS unit that overseas tax-exempt groups,” said such groups were targeted and scrutinized excessively to see if they were in violation of their tax-exempt status.

At a conference in Washington, Lerner “said organizations that included the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their applications for tax-exempt status” were targeted by IRS workers in Cincinnati and conceded it was wrong.

“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” said Lois Lerner, the chief IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations

“That was wrong,” said Lerner. “That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review.”

The IRS harassment of conservative groups was not politically motivated, claims the IRS. Furthermore, Lerner says the practice of targeting conservatives was done without the knowledge of top IRS officials and was the work of lower-level staff in Cincinatti.

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Posted in Conservatism, Elections, Tax, Tea Parties

May 10, 2013

The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer (Video)

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The Heritage Foundation’s new report estimates that an amnesty like the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill offers would cost U.S. taxpayers $6.3 trillion.

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he cost of these governmental services is far larger than many people imagine. For example, in 2010, the average U.S. household received $31,584 in government benefits and services in these four categories.

The governmental system is highly redistributive. Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors: The taxes they pay exceed the direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services they receive. For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. The average college-educated household thus generated a fiscal surplus of $29,250 that government used to finance benefits for other households.

Other households are net tax consumers: The benefits they receive exceed the taxes they pay. These households generate a “fiscal deficit” that must be financed by taxes from other households or by government borrowing. For example, in 2010, in the U.S. population as a whole, households headed by persons without a high school degree, on average, received $46,582 in government benefits while paying only $11,469 in taxes. This generated an average fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $35,113.

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Posted in Amnesty, Entitlements, Immigration, Tax