OpenCDA

May 17, 2013

Not Reassured — Not Even Close

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 6:59 am

IRSleaks[

“Ineffective management.”

That’s the official reason given in  the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s report for the Internal Revenue Service’s use of “inappropriate criteria” for evaluating applications for certain tax exemptions.

But instead of focusing on what’s in the report and then accepting it as the end-all-and-be-all, look at what’s not there.[

One of the most important missing pieces of the report is that a very liberal “journalism” group, ProPublica, routinely requested and received completed applications submitted by groups requesting tax-exempt status.  As long as the action on the applications have been completed by the IRS, there is no restriction on releasing them.  However, ProPublica received copies of several applications on which the IRS had not completed action.  That is, at best, a very serious breach of the IRS’s duty of confidentiality.

Given the significance of that breach, the Inspector General’s failure to mention it in the report is glaring.

What the report characterized with the rather vanilla “ineffective management” could also fairly be described as ineffective and imprecise policy formation and administration and inadequate supervision.  That’s another way of saying that too many employees were given far too much personal latitude in interpreting imprecise and incomplete guidance on how to determine if an applicant organization met the similarly imprecise criteria to be declared an exempt organization.  Outside Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac, that’s known as making up the rules as you go along.

Everyone, not just conservatives and not just organizations applying for tax-exempt status, should be very concerned about this breach of confidentiality by the Internal Revenue Service.  Why?  Because the Internal Revenue Service has been designated to play a key enforcement role in the tax provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as just the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.  The Internal Revenue Service said that in 2010 its exempt organizations units were swamped with applications for tax-exempt status.  That contributed to the present scandal.

If the IRS was overwhelmed with an increased workload in 2010 and responded with scandalous and likely illegal acts, shouldn’t the public be concerned that the IRS’s response in enforcement of a new and generally not understood law of even greater proportion may not measure up either?  There is nothing in the IG’s report that is reassuring.  Nothing even close to that.

 

 

 

4 Comments

  1. “how can the public not be concerned that the IRS’s response in enforcement of a new and generally not understood law of even greater proportion may not measure up either?”
    The short answer is ‘apathy’. The long answer is apathy because of the widespread and overwhelming feeling of being helpless to effect change.

    Comment by up river — May 17, 2013 @ 7:11 am

  2. “Ineffective management.” If her management was so ineffective, how did Sarah Hall Ingram get this much in bonuses?

    Comment by Bill — May 17, 2013 @ 11:44 am

  3. The head guy at the IRS just said that if they had a bigger budget and more employees they could take care of this problem. Oh, yeah, that’s what they need!

    Comment by mary — May 17, 2013 @ 3:41 pm

  4. The Affordable Care Act stands as a disaster on its own language. It’s not reassuring to hear the present (what time is it now) head of the IRS saying that the IRS could handle a longstanding problem if only it had a bigger budget and more employees. It’s not reassuring to hear HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is begging the insurance industry for money to fund the federal part of it. I wonder if our Governor is having second thoughts about the viability of Idaho’s supposed exchange?

    Comment by Bill — May 17, 2013 @ 4:37 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress
Copyright © 2024 by OpenCDA LLC, All Rights Reserved