Tag: irs

Current, Former IRS Employees Took Thousands In Fraudulent COVID Relief, Spent It On Gucci, A Mercedes, And Trips To Vegas

Five current or former employees of the IRS have been charged with scheming to defraud hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID relief.

The Department of Justice announced in a press release Tuesday that the five individuals had each been charged with separate counts of wire fraud after they defrauded the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, which provided economic relief to small business owners and individuals affected by the COVID pandemic. The fraudulent loans ranged from as little as $11,000 to more than $170,000.

“These individuals – acting out of pure greed – abused their positions by taking government funds meant for citizens and businesses who desperately needed it,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, Kevin G. Ritz, said in a statement. “I thank our law enforcement partners for rooting out this fraud. Our office will not hesitate to pursue and charge individuals who steal from our nation’s taxpayers.”

The first suspect was employed by the IRS as a Program Evaluation and Risk Analyst in the Human Capital Office. According to the criminal indictment, the suspect filed four fraudulent EIDL applications, seeking more than $500,000 in funds; he received a total of $171,400 in funds. The suspect allegedly spent the relief money on a Mercedes-Benz and placed the rest of his funds into a personal investment account. He is charged with two counts of wire fraud and an additional two counts of money laundering.

The second suspect worked for the IRS as a contact representative in the Wage and Investment Service Centers Department. According to the indictment, she allegedly sought at least $32,500 in loans from multiple PPP and EIDL applications; she received $11,500 in funds. She spent the funds on manicures, massages, and luxury clothing. She also obtained more than $16,050 in fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits from the Tennessee Department of Labor. She is charged with three counts of wire fraud.

The third suspect worked as a Management and Program Assistant in Information Technology. According to the DOJ, she allegedly submitted EIDL applications for a fashion business, seeking more than $300,000 in loans and obtaining $28,900. She allegedly spent the loan funds on Gucci apparel and a vacation in Las Vegas. She plead guilty to one count of wire fraud Tuesday.

The fourth suspect worked as a Contact Representative in the Wage and Investment Service Centers Department. He allegedly applied for four PPP and EIDL loans, seeking more than $113,000; he received $66,666 in funds. He allegedly spent the money on a Gucci satchel and other personal items. He plead guilty to a single count of wire fraud in August.

The fifth suspect worked as a Lead Management and Program Assistant in the Human Capital Office. She allegedly applied for four PPP and EIDL loans, seeking more than $133,000 in loans; she received more than $123,000. She then allegedly spent the funds on jewelry and trips to Las Vegas. She also plead guilty to one count of wire fraud in July.

Each wire fraud count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The first suspect could also face up to 10 years in prison for each money laundering charge.

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IRS unmasked: Away from politics, America’s tax agency has lots of warts, and ammunition

The Internal Revenue Service has long been a political football. Democrats alleged that in the 1960s it was used by Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon to subvert civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists, while Republicans alleged a decade ago it wrongly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.

More recently, Democrats have argued the tax agency needs $80 billion in new enforcement to end tax cheating and ease budget deficits, while Republicans say the new spending signed by President Joe Biden will only create an army of 87,000 armed agents intent on wreaking havoc on the middle and working classes.

With so much emotion, scandal and political rhetoric, it’s sometimes hard for everyday Americans to sort fact from fiction. So the team here at Just the News did a deep dive to put together a list of facts about the IRS that aren’t in dispute, from whom it audits to why it buys ammunition and arms its agents.

IRS Publishes Confidential Information of 120,000 Taxpayers Online, Then Blames ‘Human Coding Error’

On Friday, officials from Treasury Department announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had accidentally published confidential information pertaining to approximately 120,000 taxpayers’ retirement accounts on its website.

“This letter provides notice that the Internal Revenue Service recently identified an inadvertent and now-corrected disclosure of a subset of Forms 990-T,” Acting Secretary Anna Canfield Roth wrote in a letter addressed to Homeland Security Chairman Thompson.

“Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) requires this report to Congress “not later than seven days after the date on which there is reasonable basis to conclude that a major incident has occurred.” The IRS determined on Friday, August 26, that the inadvertent disclosure met this threshold,” the letter stated.

“Form 990-T is the business tax return used by tax-exempt entities, including tax-exempt organizations, government entities and retirement accounts, to report and pay income tax on income that is generated from certain investments or income unrelated to their exempt purpose,” the letter explained.

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82-Year-Old Grandma Hand-Filed Taxes for Years – 1 Small Mistake Has the IRS Demanding $2.1M

The Internal Revenue Service is going after an 82-year-old woman for an outrageous $2.1 million in “penalties” because she didn’t use the right form to file her taxes.

The grandmother from the Boston area had spent decades going to her local library and diligently filling out her IRS forms by hand and sending them in. But eventually she made a serious error, though it was one she had no way of knowing that she was making, according to Reason Magazine.

After Monica Toth’s family left Germany in the 1930s to escape Hitler’s fascist empire, they landed in Argentina, where Monica was born in 1940. By age 22, she had moved to the U.S. to start a family. Ultimately, in the 80s she became a naturalized American citizen.

In 1999, Toth’s father left her $4.2 million in a Swiss Bank account. Not being a tax accountant or tax preparer, Monica was not aware of the arcane rule that Americans who own bank accounts in foreign countries must file an annual one-page form known as the Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts report (FBAR). This form basically alerts the federal government to the existence of the bank account and lists the assets therein, the New York Post reported.

Toth had no clue that this form even existed and so, she spent years neglecting to file the form.

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Facebook censors claims IRS posted job requiring “deadly force”

Facebook and Instagram have censored the Heritage Foundation and others for suggesting that a job posting by the Internal Revenue Services required a willingness to use deadly force.

The Heritage Foundation’s posts were slapped with a “missing context” label reading.

The original job posting, which has since been edited, read that “special agents” in the agency’s Criminal Investigation branch are required to “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force if necessary.”

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IRS Whistleblower: ‘Billionaires … Laughing’ as Biden Plan Targets Working, Middle Class with Audits

A former lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), who accused the agency of going after elderly Americans, says President Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” will undoubtedly target working and middle class Americans with new IRS audits.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law on Tuesday, includes $80 billion for new IRS audits on American taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that at least $20 billion will be taken from working and middle class Americans earning less than $400,000 a year as a result of the increased IRS audits.

William Henck, a former IRS lawyer, told Fox Business Network that executives at the biggest corporations and billionaires are “sitting back laughing right now” as Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The idea that they’re going to open things up and go after these big billionaires and large corporations is quite frankly bulls–t. It’s not going to happen. They’re going to give themselves bonuses and promotions and really nice conferences,” Henck said:

“The big corporations and the billionaires are probably sitting back laughing right now,” he continued. [Emphasis added]

…

“There will be considerable incentive to basically to shake down taxpayers, and the advantage the IRS has is they have basically unlimited resources and no accountability, whereas a taxpayer has to weigh the cost of accountants, tax lawyers — fighting something in tax court,” Henck told FOX Business. [Emphasis added]

Billionaires Bill Gates and Tom Steyer have both voiced support for the Inflation Reduction Act, even as the establishment media has admitted the plan will not cut prices for American consumers “anytime soon.”

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IRS Training Included Armed Agents Carrying Out Simulated Assault on Suburban Home

An Internal Revenue Service internal report shows heavily armed agents simulating an assault on a suburban home as part of their training.

The training was featured in the 2021 IRS annual report, which shows agents at the agency’s National Criminal Investigation Training Academy (NCITA), which is located within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia.

The report documents how the agents are given “firearms training” and another image shows agents wearing tactical clothing that says ‘POLICE’ and ‘IRS-CI’.

Training also includes “physical fitness conditioning and use of force training, which includes firearms, weaponless tactics, and building entry,” according to the report.

“In addition to SAIT, NCITA assists in providing advanced training to special agents in use of force, firearms instruction, defensive tactics, and building entry.”

Another image shows agents having entered a house with guns drawn.

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IRS Deletes Job Posting Seeking Applicants Willing to ‘Use Deadly Force’

The IRS deleted a job posting Wednesday seeking a Special Agent “willing to use deadly force” for its law enforcement division, Criminal Investigation (CI). The deletion came amid renewed scrutiny of the IRS in response to a Democrat-backed spending bill that would double the size of the agency.

“As a Special Agent you will combine your accounting skills with law enforcement skills to investigate financial crimes,” the job advertisement read.

“No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation. Because of the expertise required to conduct these complex financial investigations, IRS Special Agents are considered the premier financial investigators for the Federal government,” the job posting continued.

The “Major Duties” listed in the job description included “a level of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life-threatening situations on the job,” and being “willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”

It also included a retirement of carrying “a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”

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Dems Poised To Make IRS Larger Than Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol Combined

If Democrats have their way, one of the most detested federal agencies—the Internal Revenue Service—will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661 full-time staffers, according to federal data.

The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”

That would make the IRS one of the largest federal agencies. The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents.

The money allocated to the IRS would increase the agency’s budget by more than 600 percent. In 2021, the IRS received $12.6 billion.

Although Democrats say the hiring of additional IRS agents will help root out tax cheats and other criminals, federal tax revenues have steadily risen over the past several decades. Federal tax receipts are projected to hit $5.7 trillion in 2027, up from just over $4 trillion last year without additional IRS agents.

But the roughly $450 billion in new spending proposed by Democrats requires new funding mechanisms. Some of the new spending includes $161 billion for clean electricity tax credits and $64 billion in new Affordable Care Act subsidies.

The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.

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