Tag: irs

The IRS Misplaced Millions of Taxpayer Records. Again.

Do you know where your tax records are? It’s a serious question in the case of millions of Americans whose records the IRS carelessly misplaced. That’s the big reveal in a recent inspector general’s report telling us that the federal mugging agency continues to be mindbogglingly incompetent at safeguarding the sensitive financial information it forcibly extracts from us all.

“The IRS was unable to locate any of the FY 2010 microfilm cartridges that should have been sent from the Fresno Tax Processing Center to the Kansas City Tax Processing Center,” the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in an August 8 report on the tax agency’s data-handling practices. “As a result of the lack of adequate inventory controls, the IRS cannot account for thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive business and individual tax account records.”

That’s bad—remarkably bad given the bait the information in those records represents for criminals inclined “to commit tax refund fraud identity theft,” as the report goes on to warn. You could omit the “tax refund” part since the details we’re required to submit to the IRS could enable scammers to rob us blind in a host of ways that don’t matter to the government but are extremely serious to anybody on the receiving end.

As you might expect of a government agency, the incompetence doesn’t stop there.

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Dozens of Armed IRS Agents In Tactical Gear Raid Florida Business

Dozens of armed IRS agents recently raided a Florida business, with witnesses telling a local news outlet that they were stunned by the show of force by the tax agency.

At least 25 to 30 IRS agents in tactical gear executed a search warrant at a business in Stuart, Florida, last week, according to Fox 29.

“It was like a scene from a movie,” an unnamed witness told the outlet. “They had the big gear, tactical gear because they probably didn’t know what they were walking into.”

An IRS spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the agents were from the IRS Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) unit, a division whose agents investigate crimes like fraud and tax evasion.

The agents, who are authorized to carry guns as their work can be dangerous, were at the location on “official business,” the spokesperson added.

The unnamed witness told Fox 29 that it appeared that the agents were removing evidence from the business in bags and boxes.

While details remain scant on the raid, the show of force by IRS agents was noteworthy as it recalled Republican criticism of a funding boost to the agency amid concerns that it would be used to hire more tax enforcers who would target ordinary Americans.

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Media Use Failed Russia ‘Coup’ To Knock Bombshell Biden Scandal Off The Front Page 

Last Thursday, House Republicans released two explosive testimonies from IRS whistleblowers that, if true, further suggest President Joe Biden sold his political power for profit from our enemies abroad via his son Hunter’s business dealings. Moreover, they allege the Department of Justice has done everything in its power to for years protect the Bidens, even to the point of massively interfering in an American election.

This story is huge — bigger than Monica Lewinsky and Watergate combined. If confirmed, it means that the sitting President of the United States is potentially compromised by our nation’s adversaries, and the intelligence apparatus are enabling his corruption. We have no choice but to tear it down.

Yet you wouldn’t know any of that from the headlines this weekend. Sunday’s premiere, front-page stories in each of America’s biggest newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post — were all about the quick and unsuccessful “coup” in Russia. Mentions of the Biden scandal were scant. The New York Times’ only featured Biden scandal article, titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga,” reads like satire, dismissing all the mounting allegations against the president and even praising him as a “model of … love and support” for people with drug-addicted family members.

It’s pretty interesting that almost immediately after the publication of the IRS whistleblower testimonies, the White House and State Department began sounding alarm bells over a “coup” that was over almost as soon as it started. Naturally, the corporate media was grateful to be handed a distraction story on a silver platter. The short-lived mutiny has not only dominated the headlines this weekend but was also granted wall-to-wall coverage on every major TV news channel. CNN, in particular, has really taken advantage of the Russia “coup,” using it as an opportunity to extol Biden for his “mastery of foreign policy.”

None of this is to say that this alleged attempted coup against the Kremlin isn’t newsworthy. The story has its place in the “world news” section. However, a foreign uprising that may or may not impact a war America has no business participating in should not be commanding the front pages for days on end, especially when we have far bigger fish to fry.

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16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

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ARMED ATF & IRS AGENTS HIT MONTANA GUN STORE WITH “SOVIET-STYLE INTIMIDATION RAID”

Heavily armed agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided a gun store in Great Falls, Montana, last week in what was described by a local lawmaker as a “Soviet-style intimidation raids.”

Tom Van Hoose, the owner of Highwood Creek Outfitters, told the local media outlet KRTV that 20 heavily armed agents swarmed his gun shop on Wednesday morning, confiscated 13 years of 4473 forms, and copied the firearm acquisition and disposition book.

“The fact that they think we make so much money as a gun business that they had to come investigate all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars whatever it is we supposedly absconded with, anybody that knows the margins in the gun business knows they’re not that high,” said Van Hoose.

He said the reason for the raid is unclear. He believes it could be part of a nationwide trend by Biden’s ATF:

“I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them.

“The current administration seems to be hell-bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”

Van Hoose spoke to the firearms blog The Truth About Guns, stating that the IRS claimed he had underreported and failed to report millions of dollars of income. The shop owner denied the accusation.

On Friday, Congressman Matt Rosendale sent a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, asking for answers and calling the raid “outrageous.”

“Under Director Dettelbach’s leadership of the ATF, a pattern of intimidation and harassment against hardworking Americans has emerged – Montanans will not tolerate these political witch hunts. I remind both Director Dettelbach and Commissioner Werfel that Congress has the power of the purse, and I will ensure that funding for these agencies is not weaponized against the American people,” Rosendale said in his letter.

He continued: “I request that the ATF and IRS cease conducting these Soviet-style intimidation raids.”

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SCOTUS Allows IRS to Carry Out Secret, Warrantless Searches of Innocent Taxpayers’ Bank Accounts

In a unanimous opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the IRS to go on secret, warrantless fishing expeditions through innocent taxpayers’ bank records in order to identify and collect unpaid taxes from family members and associates who have no legal interest in those bank accounts.

Despite acknowledging that “the authority vested in tax collectors may be abused, as all power is subject to abuse,” and that “Congress has given the IRS considerable power,” the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling in Polselli v. IRS declined to restrict the IRS’s authority. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute had filed an amicus brief in Polselli arguing that the sweeping investigatory power wielded by the IRS—to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by carrying out warrantless searches of the bank accounts and records of innocent people, who are given no notice or right to object to the search, merely because they may be associated with a delinquent taxpayer—offends every constitutional sensibility on the right to privacy.

“This practice of investigating the bank records of innocent taxpayers because they may have family members or associates who are delinquent on their taxes is merely a perverse form of guilt by association,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “At a minimum, Fourth Amendment protections should not disappear just because sensitive information is shared with third parties, such as banks and attorneys.”

The case arose after an IRS Revenue Officer, seeking to collect underpaid federal taxes by Remo Polselli, served summonses on the banks of Polselli’s wife and attorney in order to find account and financial records concerning Polselli. The IRS agent did not notify Polselli’s wife or attorney of the summonses, but the banks voluntarily did so. Polselli’s wife and attorney subsequently filed motions in federal district court to quash the IRS’s summonses. In siding with the IRS, the district court held that Polselli’s wife and attorney are not entitled to notice of the summons and have no right to even be heard on their motions to quash the summonses.

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IRS Whistleblower Removed From Hunter Biden Criminal Investigation, at Request of DOJ, Attorneys Say

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) removed a whistleblower and his team from a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and business dealings, at the request of the Department of Justice, according to the whistleblower’s attorneys.

“Today the [IRS] Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress,” the whistleblower’s lawyers said in a May 15 letter (pdf) addressed to multiple congressional lawmakers, first obtained by Just the News.

“He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice.”

Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, has been under federal investigation for alleged tax fraud, lobbying crimes, and money laundering.

He confirmed back in December 2020 that his business deals were being investigated. Few details have been revealed about the probe since then.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.

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It’s Been 10 Years Since the IRS’s Tea Party Scandal. Will Congress Finally Act?

A bombshell revelation came to light 10 years ago this week in 2013, when the IRS apologized for years of deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from right-of-center organizations. Hundreds of groups were improperly subjected to baseless investigations, invasive and improper demands about their donors, and lengthy delays in processing routine paperwork. The IRS’s actions at the time put a severe chill on conservative speech at the height of the Tea Party movement and leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

The revelation set off years of investigations and resignations at the IRS. Yet the agency secretly continued its efforts to silence nonprofits disfavored by the agency’s bureaucrats and political appointees. In November 2013, the IRS proposed new regulations that were nearly as damaging to the First Amendment as the targeting itself.

The agency proposed severe limits on issue speech by certain nonprofits, which would have forced many nonprofits to reclassify as political action committees and publicly expose their donors’ names and home addresses. The IRS also solicited comments on potentially expanding the restrictions to cover trade associations and other groups in the future. After backlash from across the political spectrum, the proposal was withdrawn, but that victory does not change the sad fact that federal law governing nonprofits is no safer today than it was when IRS officials decided they had the authority to discriminate against groups based on their views.

Enter the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act, the subject of a full committee hearing tomorrow in the Committee on House Administration. The legislation addresses a broad range of election, free speech, and privacy-related issues, including remedies for the IRS’s sordid history of policing speech. The bill, first introduced in 2022 and awaiting reintroduction this Congress, would prohibit the IRS from writing new speech-chilling rules for nonprofits and codify Trump-era reforms protecting nonprofit donors against unnecessary disclosures and warehousing of their personal information.

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IRS to Prioritize Enforcement Including Criminal Investigation for Certain Assets

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it would increase enforcement in the area of digital asset transactions and listed transactions.

The federal agency identified certain transactions to have high-risk issues in noncompliance and vowed to ramp up enforcement in those transactions.

“The IRS tracks many known, high-risk issues in noncompliance, such as digital asset transactions, listed transactions and certain international issues. These issues arise in multiple taxpayer segments, and data analysis shows a higher potential for noncompliance,” the tax agency wrote in its newly-released funding plan (pdf).

“We will prioritize resources to increase enforcement activities, including criminal investigation as appropriate,” the agency added.

According to the plan, the IRS will develop the information platform to support digital asset reporting and analytics tools to increase digital asset compliance in the fiscal year 2024, which is between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024.

Digital assets include convertible virtual currency, cryptocurrency, stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital representations of value, according to the IRS website.

The IRS treats digital assets as property and requires taxpayers to report taxable gains or losses from digital asset transactions.

As it’s difficult to identify the owners of digital assets, U.S. judges allow the IRS to use “John Doe summons” to seek the identities of taxpayers of interest.

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