just reorganized wrote:
[quote]Bad Wigins wrote:
Your stat about poor people being more likely to be randomly audited - where did you pull that stat from because it is DEAD wrong.
Here is the actual breakdown:
Income level Audit rate
No income reported: 3.4%
$1-25K 1.2%
25K-50K 0.7%
50K-75K 0.8%
75K-100K 0.8%
100-200K 1.0%
You're pretty stupid. Last time I checked, 3.4% is more than 1.2%, which is more than .7%. You have to make more than 200K to be audited as often as a poor person.
Democrats are barry fairies.
HeyHay wrote:
Allow me to correct that. There you go, that's accurate.
You're a moron if you think all Dems voted for Obama. There were certainly Repubs who voted for the other side. And if info had come out that Obama was lying, you can bet more Dems would have crossed over.
Bad Wigins wrote:
just reorganized wrote:[quote]Bad Wigins wrote:
Your stat about poor people being more likely to be randomly audited - where did you pull that stat from because it is DEAD wrong.
Here is the actual breakdown:
Income level Audit rate
No income reported: 3.4%
$1-25K 1.2%
25K-50K 0.7%
50K-75K 0.8%
75K-100K 0.8%
100-200K 1.0%
You're pretty stupid. Last time I checked, 3.4% is more than 1.2%, which is more than .7%. You have to make more than 200K to be audited as often as a poor person.
The other poster said poor people are audited more than ANYONE else. That isnt' even close to being true. Why did you arbitrarily cut off the income level at 200K and ignore the rest of the stats. Above that level - the audit rates are 2.7&, 5.3%, 11.8%, 20.8%, and all the way up to 29.9%. It shouldn't be surprising a family reporting ZERO income is going to questioned. The IRS suspects they are making money under the table and not reporting it.
the level of understanding in this thread of what the IRS did is rather low. that's understandable, though, because the articles written by journalists and pundits have been nearly uniformly awful to date.
the IRS didn't "audit" any individual or group. this relates to applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. (not 501(c)(3) status). until about 2008 no one thought to use 501(c)(4) organizations as political advocacy groups. they are supposed to be "social welfare" organizations, with at least 50% of their activity devoted to social welfare.
in contrast, "527" organizations are political advocacy groups. the difference is that donors to 527 organizations must be disclosed while 501(c)(4) donors can remain anonymous.
so the IRS was flooded with applications from political organizations in 2010 and 2011 who were asking for 501(c)(4) status. in order to keep the application time relatively brief for the non-political, traditional social welfare organizations, an attempt was made to separate out the political groups like karl rove's group from the non-political groups. some low level employees made decisions to use "tea party" or "patriot" in the name as one of the primary factors to select which applications received greater scrutiny.
all in all this seems like a giant non-issue, and is not even in the same ballpark as punitively going after a political opponent with an individual IRS audit. these applications were going to be reviewed in any event. the only issue is the level of scrutiny applied. because the political organizations were trying to shoehorn their way into 501(c)(4) to avoid disclosing donors as a 527 would, it makes a ton of sense to scrutinize their applications.
i recommend reading the following post for more on this:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/05/schmalbeck.html
It was previously mentioned that the strategy to seek special non-profit treatment (non-disclosure) was likely invented by a conservative think tank. Tea-party and patriot were keywords that appeared for many of the applications. When keywords appear, over and over again, for groups that are mostly politically-based you end pulling the applications to take a closer look.
There is a huge benefit to an organization, in terms of money raised, if they can protect their donors. The donors will donate more if they feel they are protected.
kaitainen wrote:
the level of understanding in this thread of what the IRS did is rather low. that's understandable, though, because the articles written by journalists and pundits have been nearly uniformly awful to date.
the IRS didn't "audit" any individual or group.
Frank VanderSloot was a subject of the Obama campaign's attacks on the wealthy. He was attacked on Obama campaign’s website for being a ”litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.” That was part of a post entitled “Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney’s donors.”
Two months later, VanderSloot received notice of an audit. Two weeks after that, the Labor Department sent notice that they would audit his THREE h-2A workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But when such cases are combined with an IRS apology for wrongdoing for specifically improperly targeting groups for their political beliefs, you would be naive to believe this should not be investigated deeply.
The first charge of Article 2 of the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon:
"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
If this current assault on American political freedom is confined to lower level employees of the IRS, they should be punished swiftly. Right now, no one has even lost their job.
No less than an independent thorough investigation is warranted.
Bowing Alinsky wrote:
kaitainen wrote:the level of understanding in this thread of what the IRS did is rather low. that's understandable, though, because the articles written by journalists and pundits have been nearly uniformly awful to date.
the IRS didn't "audit" any individual or group.
Frank VanderSloot was a subject of the Obama campaign's attacks on the wealthy. He was attacked on Obama campaign’s website for being a ”litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.” That was part of a post entitled “Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney’s donors.”
Two months later, VanderSloot received notice of an audit. Two weeks after that, the Labor Department sent notice that they would audit his THREE h-2A workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But when such cases are combined with an IRS apology for wrongdoing for specifically improperly targeting groups for their political beliefs, you would be naive to believe this should not be investigated deeply.
The first charge of Article 2 of the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon:
"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
If this current assault on American political freedom is confined to lower level employees of the IRS, they should be punished swiftly. Right now, no one has even lost their job.
No less than an independent thorough investigation is warranted.
a) there is no "assault on american political freedom", except perhaps in your head
b) you quote me talking about the 501(c)(4) issue and then attempt to refute it by talking about an entirely different situation involving an audit of an individual
c) this guy was a wealthy donor to romney, who was in fact anti-gay (sponsoring anti-gay billboards, for example), so it is not remarkable that the obama campaign would point out that he was in romney's camp. romney and other republicans do the same thing in terms of associating donors with obama and other democrats. it is entirely normal.
d) because he is very wealthy, an IRS audit is not at all surprising, the audit rates for the very wealthy are much higher than for the middle class. it would raise more flags if he had an income of, say, $50k and got audited.
kaitainen wrote:
the level of understanding in this thread of what the IRS did is rather low. that's understandable, though, because the articles written by journalists and pundits have been nearly uniformly awful to date.
the IRS didn't "audit" any individual or group. this relates to applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. (not 501(c)(3) status). until about 2008 no one thought to use 501(c)(4) organizations as political advocacy groups. they are supposed to be "social welfare" organizations, with at least 50% of their activity devoted to social welfare.
in contrast, "527" organizations are political advocacy groups. the difference is that donors to 527 organizations must be disclosed while 501(c)(4) donors can remain anonymous.
so the IRS was flooded with applications from political organizations in 2010 and 2011 who were asking for 501(c)(4) status. in order to keep the application time relatively brief for the non-political, traditional social welfare organizations, an attempt was made to separate out the political groups like karl rove's group from the non-political groups. some low level employees made decisions to use "tea party" or "patriot" in the name as one of the primary factors to select which applications received greater scrutiny.
all in all this seems like a giant non-issue, and is not even in the same ballpark as punitively going after a political opponent with an individual IRS audit. these applications were going to be reviewed in any event. the only issue is the level of scrutiny applied. because the political organizations were trying to shoehorn their way into 501(c)(4) to avoid disclosing donors as a 527 would, it makes a ton of sense to scrutinize their applications.
i recommend reading the following post for more on this:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/05/schmalbeck.html
having to deal with a flood of 501(c)(4) applications isn't the issue. the issue is how the IRS dealt with them. why only target the right wing ones because there were plenty of left wing applications filed as well? moreover, the scrutiny went well beyond the scope of determining if they were legitimate (eg, names and addresses of donors).
the IRS already has been nailed in one boldfaced lie -- that no senior IRS person knew about this in march 2012 (it was revealed that at least 1 senior IRS person knew about it in mid 2011). you come across as incredibly naive if you think the IRS targeting groups purely on political bias is no big deal.
Basically, the IRS was profiling. They knew a large number of these groups were trying to get non-profit status even though they were pacs.
It's not news that the IRS also flags individual returns that meet certain criteria.
Republicans have never had a problem with profiling in other instances. Why do they have a problem with profiling in the IRS?
Looks like the scandal is growing:
"An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas."
Profiling wrote:
Basically, the IRS was profiling. They knew a large number of these groups were trying to get non-profit status even though they were pacs.
It's not news that the IRS also flags individual returns that meet certain criteria.
Republicans have never had a problem with profiling in other instances. Why do they have a problem with profiling in the IRS?
Had they gone after all these groups (left & right leaning) then you'd be able to make this argument and sound like a rational person.
Immediate solution:
Any state with publicly elected Tea Party politicians, and significant numbers of Tea Party and Patriot organizations such as those being described should be cut loose of any Federal funding, Federal law, Federal protections, Federal programs, and just sign off on there active Secessionist petitions. Done. Bye. See how long they last before crawling back on their hands and knees.
Profiling wrote:"Republicans have never had a problem with profiling in other instances."
if you want people to take you seriously, you should consider not making such statements that make you sounds like a moron. name one instance where republicans targeted democrats, simply for being democrats, via a supposedly neutral branch of the government where there wasn't a universal outcry of outrage. the level of stupidity on these boards never ceases to amaze me.
doper wrote:
having to deal with a flood of 501(c)(4) applications isn't the issue. the issue is how the IRS dealt with them. why only target the right wing ones because there were plenty of left wing applications filed as well? moreover, the scrutiny went well beyond the scope of determining if they were legitimate (eg, names and addresses of donors).
asking for the names of major donors in connection with an application for tax exempt status is neither unusual nor extraordinary.
and they targeted right wing ones (primarily) because the applications came from right wing groups. this was a well known ploy, publicized by karl rove's crossroads GPS. see, e.g.,
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/21/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-campaign-20101021it was right wing groups applying, so right-wing keywords were used to trigger review. if it had been left-wing groups applying, then different keywords would have been used.
if you actually read the IG report that you reference, you will see that once the "senior IRS person" (who herself is a career employee, not a political appointee) became aware, the criteria used to flag applications changed so that it included groups seeking to expand government spending, i.e., left-leaning groups.
this is so clearly not a scandal that it is mind boggling to me that people are trying to make it one. groups who should not have been granted 501(c)(4) status applied for that status. employees at the IRS applied the rules to deny those applications. what is the scandal?
problem solver wrote:
Immediate solution:
Any state with publicly elected Tea Party politicians, and significant numbers of Tea Party and Patriot organizations such as those being described should be cut loose of any Federal funding, Federal law, Federal protections, Federal programs, and just sign off on there active Secessionist petitions. Done. Bye. See how long they last before crawling back on their hands and knees.
That is an entirely different discussion. I'm all for eliminating groups sponsored by George Soros and Obama's Organizing for America. However, this is a discussion about the IRS violating the laws on the books right now - not deflecting away from the topic of this thread.
Drew G wrote:
HeyHay wrote:Allow me to correct that. There you go, that's accurate.
You're a moron if you think all Dems voted for Obama. There were certainly Repubs who voted for the other side. And if info had come out that Obama was lying, you can bet more Dems would have crossed over.
5 years into the barACK! & mooooooochelle train wreck & you're still defending their integrity? That's just naive, blinding stupidity, son..
kaitainen wrote:
doper wrote:having to deal with a flood of 501(c)(4) applications isn't the issue. the issue is how the IRS dealt with them. why only target the right wing ones because there were plenty of left wing applications filed as well? moreover, the scrutiny went well beyond the scope of determining if they were legitimate (eg, names and addresses of donors).
asking for the names of major donors in connection with an application for tax exempt status is neither unusual nor extraordinary.
and they targeted right wing ones (primarily) because the applications came from right wing groups. this was a well known ploy, publicized by karl rove's crossroads GPS. see, e.g.,
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/21/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-campaign-20101021it was right wing groups applying, so right-wing keywords were used to trigger review. if it had been left-wing groups applying, then different keywords would have been used.
if you actually read the IG report that you reference, you will see that once the "senior IRS person" (who herself is a career employee, not a political appointee) became aware, the criteria used to flag applications changed so that it included groups seeking to expand government spending, i.e., left-leaning groups.
this is so clearly not a scandal that it is mind boggling to me that people are trying to make it one. groups who should not have been granted 501(c)(4) status applied for that status. employees at the IRS applied the rules to deny those applications. what is the scandal?
Agreed and wasn't the head of the IRS at the time an appointee of GW Bush?
Where is the scandal?
After awhile listening to the Republicans gets very tiring.
kaitainen wrote:
doper wrote:having to deal with a flood of 501(c)(4) applications isn't the issue. the issue is how the IRS dealt with them. why only target the right wing ones because there were plenty of left wing applications filed as well? moreover, the scrutiny went well beyond the scope of determining if they were legitimate (eg, names and addresses of donors).
asking for the names of major donors in connection with an application for tax exempt status is neither unusual nor extraordinary.
and they targeted right wing ones (primarily) because the applications came from right wing groups. this was a well known ploy, publicized by karl rove's crossroads GPS. see, e.g.,
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/21/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-campaign-20101021it was right wing groups applying, so right-wing keywords were used to trigger review. if it had been left-wing groups applying, then different keywords would have been used.
if you actually read the IG report that you reference, you will see that once the "senior IRS person" (who herself is a career employee, not a political appointee) became aware, the criteria used to flag applications changed so that it included groups seeking to expand government spending, i.e., left-leaning groups.
this is so clearly not a scandal that it is mind boggling to me that people are trying to make it one. groups who should not have been granted 501(c)(4) status applied for that status. employees at the IRS applied the rules to deny those applications. what is the scandal?
which part of "disproportionately" do you not comprehend? if only conservative groups were applying for 501(c)(4) status, then, yes, it would not be a big deal to give them a better look. however, there were plenty of left of center groups who also applied for 501(c)(4) status in this time period and they were given a free pass. the fact that you either cannot or do not want to recognize this is mind-boggling.
i did find it amusing that you seem to believe that being a career IRS employee somehow prevents one from being senior. senior is senior and it's irrelevant how the person got there. i also didn't reference any reports so nice try there too.
i do think that the IRS should be scrutinizing ALL non-profits because so many of them don't meet tax-exempt standards. however, reading blatantly biased malarkey on here, like what you seem to enjoy writing, isn't going to make that happen.
doper wrote:
which part of "disproportionately" do you not comprehend? if only conservative groups were applying for 501(c)(4) status, then, yes, it would not be a big deal to give them a better look. however, there were plenty of left of center groups who also applied for 501(c)(4) status in this time period and they were given a free pass. the fact that you either cannot or do not want to recognize this is mind-boggling.
i did find it amusing that you seem to believe that being a career IRS employee somehow prevents one from being senior. senior is senior and it's irrelevant how the person got there. i also didn't reference any reports so nice try there too.
i do think that the IRS should be scrutinizing ALL non-profits because so many of them don't meet tax-exempt standards. however, reading blatantly biased malarkey on here, like what you seem to enjoy writing, isn't going to make that happen.
The reason why in 2008-2010 Conservative groups were being looked at more was because at the time way more conservative groups were applying for tax exempt status. This was the time of the rise of the tea party after all.
So the IRS looked for key words in the application like tea party because it was obvious that a large number of the groups did not deserve tax-exempt status and were doing it just for political purposes. For example Karl Rove pushed for this tactic among conservative groups.
However, once a senior official realized what was going on and how it could be looked at in a wrong way THEY CHANGED HOW THE KEY WORDS WERE LOOKED FOR IN THE COMPUTER DATA BASE. This was before any controversy was brought forward by the Republicans and faux news. In other words they fixed their own issue. Once the senior official in the IRS saw how things could be seen as bad they changed the search data to include democrat leaning groups also.
The whole point behind adding these key words to the search data base was to make it quicker to look for obvious political groups that needed to be looked at closer in this time period. AT THIS TIME THE TEA PARTY WAS THE BIG GROUP APPLYING FOR THESE EXEMPTIONS. In this time period very few democrat leaning groups were applying for tax exempt status but very large numbers of conservative groups were because they had lost the recent election.
This is a common practice in the IRS. They did not purposely target conservative groups. THE GUY WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THE IRS AT THE TIME WAS APPOINTED BY GEORGE W. BUSH.
Once again this is a made up controversy from the republicans and faux news.