Tag: irs

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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Joe Biden set to double the size of the IRS

At a time of soaring inflation, falling earnings, and shriveling 401(k)s, what should Joe Biden and his Senate Democrats come up with for the beleaguered public in their “Inflation Reduction Act” besides this:

Start with the spending explosion for the Internal Revenue Service that Biden demanded from the start. That is $80 billion to deploy 87,000 new IRS agents. Enough to fill every seat in Nationals Park twice. Enough to fill the Roman Colosseum 1.7 times.

That’s more new IRS agents than the entire combined personnel of all U.S. aircraft carriers.

The bill also gives taxpayer money to the IRS to buy new cars, and more money for IRS “office rent.”

The official IRS watchdog — the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — reports that the IRS already has more cars than it needs. And that the IRS cannot show that its employees are limiting their use of those cars to official business.

That’s from a Daily Caller op-ed written by tax maven Grover Norquist, and the details of it are appalling — an incompetent agency that cannot manage its affairs, has a history of political activity and union cash thrown at Democrats, and now gets more, way more, billions, in a shrinking economy with fewer than 1,000 billionaires for those 87,000 agents to supposedly target as tax cheats.

Anyone believe them when they say they just want billionaires to pay their “fair share”?  We all know what they really have in mind: going after small business, the actual engine of economic growth, to ensure that everyone has nothing, and everyone will enjoy it.

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Testimony from Lois Lerner in IRS targeting scandal to be released

Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court ordered the release of testimony of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Holly Paz, her top aide and former IRS director of Office of Rulings and Agreements. 

Both IRS officials played key roles in the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and individuals opposed to Obama policies in the run up to the 2012 presidential election.

The ruling in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Ohio Western Division unsealing the case records comes in the lawsuit (NorCal Tea Party Patriots, et al. v. The Internal Revenue Service, et al. (No. 1:13-cv-00341)).

Lerner’s and Paz’s depositions were sealed by Judge Barrett in April 2017, after Lerner’s and Paz’s lawyers claimed the two officials were receiving threats. The court finally ordered the unsealing of the depositions four years after plaintiffs requested the depositions be unsealed and only after plaintiffs filed for a writ of mandamus to force action in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz: Biden’s IRS Spent Approximately $700,000 on Ammo ‘Between March and June 1’

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told Breitbart News Saturday the IRS spent approximately $700,000 “between March and June 1” purchasing ammunition.

Gaetz described the ammunition acquisition as “bizarre.”

He noted he and his Republican colleagues are trying to ascertain why the ammunition was purchased, noting, “There is concern that this is part of a broader effort to have any entity in the federal government buy up ammo to reduce the amount of ammunition that is in supply, while at the same time, making it harder to produce ammo.”

Gaetz noted a scenario where federal entities are buying up ammo puts citizens in a place where the exercise of the Second Amendment is limited due to the inability to get ammunition.

He painted a dire scenario where the government reduces ammunition production “and, on the other hand, [soaks] up the supply of it.”

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Supersizing the IRS: Another Big, Bad Biden Idea

The Biden administration is dead-set on taking your money. 

Plan A was to repeal the entire Trump tax cut and vastly increase corporate and individual income taxes on top of new taxes on energy. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have slowed this down, reduced the size of any final tax cut, and perhaps killed tax cuts before the 2022 midterm elections. So plan B is to give the IRS vast new powers to squeeze more money out of taxpayers using the current code. And then there’s plan C: inflation. Print more dollars and spend them. 

While the world talks about possible tax hikes and the painful reality of inflation, they’re missing the disturbing developments in plan B — developments that would adversely affect the lives of all tax-paying citizens.

The Democrats want to supersize the IRS.

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden agree that they want to double the size of the IRS and spend even more tax dollars to harass and audit taxpayers. But wait. There’s more. They also want to give IRS bureaucrats new powers to monitor the bank accounts of taxpayers and have the IRS make out your tax return and simply send you a bill for what the IRS thinks you owe.

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IRS Stole Money and Hid the Details for Years

The Internal Revenue Service demands transparency when its agents conduct audits. They open ledgers, snoop through bank accounts, and review receipts. But its appetite for disclosure disappears when the roles reverse.

The IRS stonewalled for more than six years when our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, sought access to the agency’s forfeiture database. Initially, the IRS wanted $750,000 in fees before it would accommodate the request—an unreasonable demand that would render the Freedom of Information Act useless for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Once in court, the IRS attempted a bait and switch. Rather than provide the actual data, it released a summary report that was 99 percent redacted. It then declared that it had gone above and beyond the legal requirements. The ruse worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the agency in 2019. After a second trip to the district court, the IRS finally coughed up the full database in April 2022.

For anyone without a law degree or the resources to endure a long legal battle, the message from the IRS is clear: Do not try this at home. Accountability is good for the taxpayer, but not for the tax collector.

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White House, IRS, CDC, and many other US government websites sending data to Big Tech via Google tracking code

Most of the major US federal government websites and numerous state and local government websites are sending real-time surveillance data back to Google as users browse their websites. Even websites where users are submitting sensitive or personal information, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) tips page and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, contain tracking code that sends real-time visitor data back to Google.

Most of these government websites contain tracking code from the web traffic analytics tool Google Analytics. This code collects detailed user data which is sent to Google’s servers, analyzed, and presented to website owners via an online dashboard.

Google Analytics automatically collects data on the pages visited, the time and duration of each visit, and other visitor data (such as the device, browser, operating system, and screen resolution of visitors). It can also be configured to collect data on more specific actions such as when users click or tap specific links, download content, or fill out forms.

Some government websites also have code from other Google services (such as DoubleClick, Google Adsense, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube) and other tech giants (such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter) embedded on some of their pages.

The US government openly admits to using Google Analytics tracking code on 400 executive branch domains and 5,700 total websites. It even displays this surveillance data publicly via a real-time online dashboard which also tracks visitors with Google Analytics.

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