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The IRS Will Not have Their “Targeting” Investigation Completed by the 2014 Elections

The Washington Times reports that the IRS will not be able to finish their investigation regarding the targeting of Tea Party and other groups, until far after the 2014 elections:

“John Koskinen, the man President Obama tapped to clean up the embattled agency, also said it will take years to respond to all of the document requests from Congress. He told Congress that even complying with a subpoena for emails from just a handful of key employees couldn’t be done before the end of this year because it takes time to have attorneys delete protected taxpayer information”.

It is quite convenient that there will be no resolution to the IRS scandal before the midterm elections, especially on top of the new proposed IRS regulations regarding 501(c)4s.

The IRS is an agency that needs to clean house from top to bottom.

Tax Changes to the 2013 IRS 1040, Part IV: Itemized Deduction Phase Out Rules

What is a phase out rule?

When a taxpayer nears an income limit to qualify for a tax credit, there is a gradual reduction of that tax credit. This is known as a phase out. Higher income earners need to be aware that phase outs will come into play as they file their taxes this year.

It is noted that “The last time we saw a phase-out rule for itemized deductions was back in 2009. Unfortunately, this phase-out provision has also been resurrected for 2013 and beyond.

As a result, you can potentially lose up to 80% of your 2013 write-offs for home mortgage interest, state and local income and property taxes, charitable contributions, and miscellaneous itemized deduction items (such as investment expenses and fees for tax advice and preparation).

Phase-out starts as the following AGI thresholds: $250,000 for singles, $300,000 for married joint-filing couples, $275,000 for heads of households, and $150,000 for married individuals who file separate returns.

More specifically, the total amount of your affected itemized deductions is reduced by 3% of the amount by which your AGI exceeds the threshold. However, the reduction cannot exceed 80% of the total affected deductions that you started off with.”

With IRS Scandal, Should We Delay Implementation of Obamacare?

obamacare-cartoon-2-a

Back in 2009, Obama gave a speech at Arizona State University and joked about using the IRS to audit unsavory people. In a jolting forecast nearly four years ago, Glenn Reynolds wrote a response in the WSJ, saying,

“Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system”.

As the IRS problems continue to unfold, it’s pretty clear that confidence from all sides is low right now.

With that in mind, one question should definitely be discussed: Should we delay the implementation of Obamacare? Obamacare is designed to be enforced by….the IRS.

Last week, CNBC explained how this will work:

“Get ready for the Internal Revenue Service to play a dominant role in health care. When Obamacare takes full effect next year, the agency will enforce most of the laws involved in the reform — even deciding who gets included in the health-care mandate.”

and further:

“In its 5-4 ruling last year, the Supreme Court upheld the law’s mandate that Americans have health insurance, saying that Congress can enforce the mandate under its taxing authority and through the IRS.

As a result, the agency has to administer 47 tax provisions under Obamacare. They include the right to levy a penalty against businesses and individuals who don’t provide or acquire insurance. Noting that the IRS will collect the penalties, the decision labeled them a tax.

The IRS also has to determine how to distribute annual subsidies to 18 million people who make less than $45,000 a year and thus qualify for subsidies in buying health coverage, as well as how to deliver tax credits to small businesses that buy coverage for workers”.

Obviously we currently have incompetency, partisanship, and trust issues in the IRS. And don’t forget about financial — IRS head Shulman asked for more money (prior to leaving in November 2012) in order to handle Obamacare in 2014. And on top of it all, the head of the IRS, Steven Miller, resigned yesterday.

At this point, the targeting has swelled to 500. Can the IRS be trusted anymore in implement Obamacare in a fair and just manner?

UPDATE:….and the concern is now very real, folks. 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. This was confirmed today by the IRS.

The Barack H Obama Foundation Received Tax Exempt Status in Just One Month in 2011. By Lois Lerner

A fresh Op-Ed this morning by IRS head Steven Miller reveals the lengths to which the IRS and the White House are going to spin the on-going scandal.

The agency was simply trying to manage the explosive growth in applications for 501(c)(4) status that started pouring in to the IRS in 2010. The Internal Revenue Service recognizes that we should have done a better job of handling the influx of applications by advocacy groups,” Miller wrote.

We saw the shoots of this line of thinking yesterday both from David Plouffe and Nancy Pelosi. Trying to suggest that all these groups that have sprung from the Citizen’s United ruling clogged up the IRS, who was then somehow reduced to scrutinizing groups in order to manage this problem. If only Citizen’s United could be overturned!

David Plouffe, former WH Adviser observed on Twitter “What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.”

And Nancy Pelosi was a bit more to the point:

“We need accountability at the IRS, of course, as to how this happened. But we’ve really got to overturn Citizens United which has exacerbated the situation. So I’ve called for DISCLOSE, that’s a dare, disclose… I’ve been calling for it for over a year, disclose, who are these people? Transparency, amend the constitution to overturn Citizens United, reform the political system, let’s take money down as far as possible. Public financing of campaigns, clean campaigns and empowerment of people because people feel very left out of the loop“.

However, the organizations who were subject to additional scrutiny were applying for either 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 or others, as revealed in this timeline put out by the WSJ on May 13th. but the apologists are counting on citizens to not know the different. By focusing on the 501(c)4 side of it, they can focus on calling out and blaming Citizens United.

Now back to Steven Miller. Further down his Op-Ed, he writes

“Mistakes were made, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan motivation,” he wrote. “We are — and will continue to be — dedicated to reviewing all applications for tax-exempt status in an impartial manner.”

Except, of course, when it comes to the Barack H Obama Foundation.

I have not found this elsewhere, so you’re seeing it here first.

Let’s go back to May 8, 2011, right in the thick of the IRS targeting activity. The NY Post writes a revealing piece about the Barack H Obama Foundation, run by Obama’s half-brother Malik:

“President Obama’s half-brother runs an off-the-books American charity that claims to support poor Kenyans — but it lies about its federal status and no one knows how it spends its money.” … Malik started his charity the year his brother ran for president. The foundation claims to be a tax-exempt, federally recognized nonprofit. It is not. Nor are there any filings of its expenditures, which the IRS requires of larger charities. Alton Ray Baysden, a former State Department employee at whose Virginia home the charity was founded in 2008, admitted the organization has not even applied for tax-exempt status”

Oh and incidentally, the National Legal and Policy Center, a Washington, DC, watchdog group, made a formal complaint to the IRS and US Post Office about the Foundation that prior week in the beginning of May 2011.

The result? This sunlight on the foundation means that the The Barack H Obama Foundation hurriedly applied for and received tax exempt status in an unprecedented 30 days. The letter of their approval is currently available on the foundations’ website.It was signed Lois Lerner, the senior IRS in the middle of this scandal, of all people. On top of it, the status was made retroactive to December 2008.

See here:

Barack H Foundation Letter For Tax Exempt Status in June 2011

The plot thickens, as the apologies ring hollow.

UPDATE: Thanks Daily Caller for “borrowing” from information regarding the Obama Foundation in my post this morning (written at 9:45 am) for your post at 5:00pm. It was also posted on Canada Free Press and Red State this morning before anyone else wrote on it. Glad I could help (without receiving credit).