Senate subcommittee: No political bias in IRS targeting

[alp227]

WASHINGTON — A Senate subcommittee has confirmed findings that the Internal Revenue Service used inappropriate criteria target Tea Party groups, but also found "no evidence of IRS political bias" in selecting those groups for added scrutiny.

"The lack of political bias doesn't mean, however, that the IRS acted properly," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich, the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. His report found mismanagement and poor communication were responsible for "inappropriate, intrusive, and burdensome questioning of groups," but said conservative groups were not the only ones targeted.

In fact, liberal groups often "experienced the same mistreatment," according to the majority report by subcommittee Democrats. Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee reached a split verdict, however. A dissenting report by Republicans noted that 83% of the groups being held up by the IRS were right-leaning.

The subcommittee's dueling reports, released Friday, are the first from four congressional committees investigating the affair, and comes nearly 16 months after the scandal first erupted. The Democratic-controlled subcommittee had already been investigating how the IRS enforces rules on political activity by so-called tax-exempt social welfare organizations — known as 501(c)(4) groups — when a Treasury watchdog's audit found that the IRS held up Tea Party groups.

full: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/09/05/senate-subcommittee-report-on-irs-tea-party-targeting/15130715/

AP: IRS says it has lost emails from 5 more employees

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has lost emails from five more employees who are part of congressional probes into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, the tax service disclosed Friday.

The IRS said in June that it could not locate an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.

On Friday, the IRS issued a report to Congress saying the agency also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.

The disclosure came on the same day the Senate's subcommittee on investigations released competing reports on how the IRS handled applications from political groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

[Fred Sanders]

1. The sudden void in election finance laws created by Citizens United, a void which

continues to this day as Republicans block any laws to fill the void, was the root cause of the IRS ramping up its oversight of hundreds of groups suddenly claiming tax exempt status on the basis of doing "primarily welfare work" with names like Tea Party Patriots and Apple Pie Lovers, who then did primarily political work...the IRS was doing its job, a job Republicans created an entire propaganda strategy to make them stop.

History puts a lot of stuff into context.