Aug 14, 2013 · The Texas Patriots Tea Party is part of the FIRST lawsuit against the IRS based on the politically targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.
The American Center for Law and Justice [ACLJ] announced Wednesday that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS on behalf of 25 Tea Party and conservative organizations regarding the government entity's recent scandal involving the alleged unfair targeting and scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax exemption status.
Judge approves tea party group's lawsuit against IRS Law School News. ... Effective September 1, 2017, Texas will become the 47th state to pass a statewide ban on texting while driving. Governor Abbott’s signing of House Bill 62 is an effort to unify Texas under a uniform ban and remedy the “patchwork quilt of regulations that dictate ...
Then there is the Katy Tea Party Patriots, which filed for 501(c)(4) status in 2009. This group actually ran an “Oust Obama 2012” campaign, organizing block-watching with the Fort Bend GOP and phone-banking against Obama at GOP headquarters in Sugarland and Houston, Texas. Still featured on the front page of the group’s website is an October 4, 2012 article titled “Our …
While it is well known that the so-called IRS scandal has been used by Tea Partiers to bash the IRS, less well known are the actual facts of the case.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) is fed up with Republicans' circulation of false claims about voter fraud in his state. On Saturday, July 10, Fetterman appeared on MSNBC where he raised concerns about the dangerous spread of misinformation about the 2020 presidential election.
Four days after the Justice Department closed its investigation, 19 members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee led by the Committee's Chairman, Jason Chaffetz (R- UT ), filed a resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Those sponsoring the impeachment resolution to remove Koskinen from office accused him of failing to prevent the destruction of evidence in allowing the erasure of back-up tapes containing thousands of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, and of making false statements under oath to Congress. In a statement released by the Committee, Chaffetz said Koskinen "failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled. Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress."
Beginning in March 2010, the IRS more closely scrutinized certain organizations applying for tax-exempt status under sections 501 (c) (3) and 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code by focusing on groups with certain words in their names. In May 2010, some employees of the "Determinations Unit" of the Cincinnati office of the IRS, which is tasked with reviewing applications pertaining to tax-exempt status, began developing a spreadsheet that became known as the "Be On the Look Out" ("BOLO") list.
When the Obama administration requested in 2011 that Congress increase the IRS's $12.1 billion budget by $1 billion to allow the agency to hire 5,100 additional agents, Congress instead reduced the IRS budget to $11.8 billion, and the IRS offered buyouts to 5,400 of its 95,000 employees.
In late September 2017, an exhaustive report by the Treasury Department's inspector general found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny, blunting claims that the issue had been an Obama-era partisan scandal. The 115 page report confirmed the findings of the prior 2013 report that some conservative organizations had been unfairly targeted, but also found that the pattern of misconduct had been ongoing since 2004 and was non-partisan in nature.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that inappropriate criteria had been used by IRS personnel to select certain applications for tax exemption status for further review and that inappropriate procedures were applied against organizations based on their names or policy positions. According to the audit, beginning early in 2010, front-line IRS agents violated IRS policy by failing to handle tax matters in an impartial manner that would promote public confidence:
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted May 30 to June 2, 2013, found that 55% of respondents believed that the controversy raises questions about the Obama administration's honesty and integrity. This poll found 33% of respondents blamed Obama directly for the actions underlying the controversy.
Shulman resigned his post in late 2012, before the controversy came to light.