It looks bad, but lets see what the details are. The common thread with the audits may have less to do with the Tea Party, and more to do with dubious-looking tax returns. The donations may be completely incidental. Maybe the audited donors were “Sovereign Citizens” who don’t think income taxes are constitutional, for example.
The reason some Tea Party groups are getting hard scrutiny from the IRS is because they are claiming tax-exempt status, on the basis that they are non-political “social advocacy” groups. That doesn’t pass the smell test, and those groups should be scrutinized, as were the liberal organizations who tried to pull the same thing. If you are a political group, don’t try to weasel out of paying taxes. That also draws IRS attention to the donors.
As far as reliable news sources, the Washington Times is owned by the Reverend Moon, a well-known kook.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Or do you disagree that the juxtaposition of the audit rates could turn out to be misleading? Or–and I find this likelier–do you not care about being mislead on the details?[/quote]
A tenfold level of scrutiny can’t be explained away simply by the fact that they’re political donors.[/quote]
I am inclined to expect the same, but the thing about me is that I don’t say I know something until I do know it. Either way, the original point stands.
Relatedly, if you read something in the Washington Times, it is always good to ask, “In what way am I being misled here?”
[/quote]
But not so The New York Times right?
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Not to the same extent. Not even remotely close. Its opinion pages are partisan and frequently silly; its news pages are not even in the same solar system as those of the Washington Times. But, hey, what else to expect of a gift from the messiah, right?
[quote]K2000 wrote:
It looks bad, but lets see what the details are. The common thread with the audits may have less to do with the Tea Party, and more to do with dubious-looking tax returns. The donations may be completely incidental. Maybe the audited donors were “Sovereign Citizens” who don’t think income taxes are constitutional, for example.
The reason some Tea Party groups are getting hard scrutiny from the IRS is because they are claiming tax-exempt status, on the basis that they are non-political “social advocacy” groups. That doesn’t pass the smell test, and those groups should be scrutinized, as were the liberal organizations who tried to pull the same thing. If you are a political group, don’t try to weasel out of paying taxes. That also draws IRS attention to the donors.
As far as reliable news sources, the Washington Times is owned by the Reverend Moon, a well-known kook.[/quote]
No. This is patently false. These groups were singled out on the bases of having names with words like “tea party” and “patriot” with absolutely different standards of evaluation for liberal sounding groups doing the same things. Not to mention the IRS went to illegal lengths in demanding information they had no right to and that had no pertinence to the groupâ??s qualification. On top of purposely delaying the process for these groups for YEARS. This was an arm of the federal government attacking and illegally hampering, harassing, and silencing political opposition. It’s nothing short of tyranny. It’s also strong evidence certain positions of the tea party are correct.
Well the fact that they lied about destroying illegally obtained personal information is hard evidence. Heads should roll if that?s all it was.
SMH, what exactly is your reasonable explanation for why they illegally obtained the donor lists in the first place and then lied about destroying them?
[quote]K2000 wrote:
the Washington Times is owned by the Reverend Moon, a well-known kook.[/quote]
I don’t think, as of fairly recently, the Moonies own it anymore–(I could be wrong)–but it sprung from his loins, and it reads so. The notion that it could be compared favorably with a great hard-news paper like the NYT or WSJ is ludicrous.
To play Devil’s Advocate, the 10 percent vs. 1 percent could be an invalid comparison because of differences in the economic/business profiles of the donors vs. the general population. But to play Devil’s Advocate rebuttal, it hardly seems likely that the average audit rate for a comparable group of people who were not Tea party group donors would be so high as 10%.
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What is on a return is more often than not what sparks an audit than profession or income level.
Some audits are selected at random, however, the majority of that “randomness” is dependent upon information contained in the return, not on the “occupation” box’s contents.
I’ve got clients that regularly report hundreds of millions of dollars of income, get notices all the time, and no mention or need to audit. I have clients that report 50k, but fill out certain forms and get audited.
If it is true that 10% of donors on Tea Party lists are audited, and any single digit less are audited who appear on the donor list for Act Blue or Media Matters, then this is, without a doubt, political persecution. 10% is a huge god damn number given the subject matter.
We prepare multitudes of returns every year, across industries and majority high net worth individuals, and the audit rate is so significantly lower than 10%, for us to hit 10% in any one year, let alone aggregate in the decade I’ve been here would be an anomaly of epic proportions.
[quote]K2000 wrote:
the Washington Times is owned by the Reverend Moon, a well-known kook.[/quote]
I don’t think, as of fairly recently, the Moonies own it anymore–(I could be wrong)–but it sprung from his loins, and it reads so. The notion that it could be compared favorably with a great hard-news paper like the NYT or WSJ is ludicrous.[/quote]
This particular poster has shown to consistently be more concerned with who is making an assertion than the assertion itself.
And as to the rest of his post… OFA uses Bam’s sigil and passed through IRS “scrutiny” on the fast track. In other words, his premise is utter bullshit.
[quote]Brett620 wrote:
But the “wait and judge when we see the evidence” stance can’t be applied with this administration…[/quote]
Difficulties notwithstanding, it’s the only stance that can ever be correctly taken.[/quote]
“Difficulties” are obstructing justice just not complying w/ subpoenas knowing that the atty gen. will not do shit to enforce anthing. How in the world are you supposed to conduct a proper investigation???
[quote]K2000 wrote:
the Washington Times is owned by the Reverend Moon, a well-known kook.[/quote]
I don’t think, as of fairly recently, the Moonies own it anymore–(I could be wrong)–but it sprung from his loins, and it reads so. The notion that it could be compared favorably with a great hard-news paper like the NYT or WSJ is ludicrous.[/quote]
I didn’t nor have I ever given my opinion on the Washington Times. I could go into detail about the unethical practices at the NYTimes including plagiarism but why bother? I don’t make assumptions based on the source anyway. I critically examine the content.
The IRS has told Congress that it has lost some of former employee Lois G. Lernerâ??s emails from 2009 through 2011, including those she sent to other federal agencies…
Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he was stunned that it took more than a year into the investigation for the IRS to inform Congress that it didnâ??t have those emails.
“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” Mr. Camp said. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”
Mr. Camp said the emails lost were “critical years” from the beginning of the targeting of conservative groups.
“Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies,” Mr. Camp said. “Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.”
^ It appears that this may be destruction of evidence, which is a criminal act. For one, no government facility would not have multiple back up systems. You could easily pull it off of the server, couldn’t you? And secondly, where is the FBI and their forensic division on this? You can bet if this was a Wall Street crime, they would seize all equipment and tear it inside out and find that data.
^ It appears that this may be destruction of evidence, which is a criminal act. For one, no government facility would not have multiple back up systems. You could easily pull it off of the server, couldn’t you? And secondly, where is the FBI and their forensic division on this? You can bet if this was a Wall Street crime, they would seize all equipment and tear it inside out and find that data.
[quote]Brett620 wrote:
^ It appears that this may be destruction of evidence, which is a criminal act. For one, no government facility would not have multiple back up systems. You could easily pull it off of the server, couldn’t you?
[/quote]
Exactly. The hard drives would’ve been mirrored too. And you would have to deliberately wipe a drive with special software like Norton wipe then do the same on the mirror drives. It’s absolute bullshit - obstruction, perverting the course of justice and destruction of evidence.
[quote]
And secondly, where is the FBI and their forensic division on this? You can bet if this was a Wall Street crime, they would seize all equipment and tear it inside out and find that data.
"…Congressional Republicans are incensed that the IRS transmitted a 1.1 million-page database of information concerning tax-exempt organizations to the FBI shortly before the 2010 election.
"Congressional committees are investigating the possible use of the IRS to punish the Obama administration’s political enemies. Earlier this month, the Justice Department turned over the database to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in response to a subpoena. News of the data transfer was disclosed by the committee on Monday.
“Several Republicans, including the chairman of that committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif), pressed Mr. Comey on the issue at Wednesday’s hearing. GOP lawmakers are probing whether the IRS did anything inappropriate in coordinating with the Justice Department to investigate improper political activity by some tax-exempt organizations.”
Ok. So Lois Lerner in 2010 also sent 1.1 million pages of privileged information to the FBI without a court order.
The FBI agent in charge arranged the transfer and even specified what format the information should be in.
The e-mails are published in the WSJ, and now other e-mails from 2009 to 2011 are “missing.”
And the FBI says that it only looked at the “table of contents.”
^ certainly. And what about the documentation from 2011 that this data became missing? Ok, if they can’t provide the emails, what about the communication chain when the data became “lost”?
Following this story is mind blowing. This “The Dog Ate My E-mail” scenario is an absolute joke. Now the hard drive has been recycled.
And all important correspondence is required to be documented on hard copies, primarily for this reason. Why are not people exploring the “Federal Recordkeeping Act”??
And this doesn’t even seem like news. Granted, we got the mess in Iraq that takes precedence, then we had out dear deserter, but this is goes to show how turned out the populace really is. As someone who has been audited, I take a keen interest in this.
And a question: if I was audited during the periods all the records went “missing”, could I use this as a proper defense on my behalf? Mine was actually before this period, but I’m curious.
