HOW CONGRESS CAN STOP IRS VIOLATIONS OF FREEDOM AND THE LAW

HOW CONGRESS CAN STOP IRS VIOLATIONS OF FREEDOM AND THE LAW

Written by Richard Rahn

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

After last week's ruling wherein a federal court failed to permanently bar the Internal Revenue Service from targeting conservative groups, there can be no doubt that liberty and the IRS are incompatible. The IRS continues to seize bank accounts of individuals and businesses without a court determination of wrongdoing. The IRS is supporting the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) initiative to the automatic exchange of individual and business financial account information in tax matters between governments. The IRS code is now so complex -- something like 77,000 pages no one can understand -- that everyone is at risk. Officials of the Obama administration and the IRS have demonstrated time and time again that they are willing to misuse their powers for partisan political purposes. Now, in essence, the court has said it is OK, provided they promise not to do it again. If there are no consequences for bad behavior, one would be naive to believe it will not be repeated. Congress has the power to correct the above-mentioned abuses. If Democrats continue to hold one or both houses of Congress, it is almost a certainty that no real reform will occur, because it is not in their political interest to do so. The Republicans could and should make the necessary reforms, but even if they control both houses of Congress, they may be too timid to do so. Still, there is at least a chance they will do the right thing. What is a voter to do -- if one wants to try to preserve what remains of liberty? One who votes for almost any Democrat for Congress is likely voting for continuing and perhaps expanding the IRS offenses -- so those who value economic liberty have no choice but to vote against the Democrat. Congress needs to pass legislation that gives the right to taxpayers to hold individuals within the IRS personally accountable for political targeting or other improper uses of power. That is, IRS employees must have their sovereign immunity protections taken away from them. The potential problems an IRS employee might have with the loss of such protection is of far less danger to the republic than the danger that politically corrupted, irresponsible and renegade IRS employees pose to the public. IRS employees should be no more protected than are people in the private sector who misbehave. Also, every IRS communication to any taxpayer should be signed by the individual in the IRS who is specifically responsible for the content and accuracy of the communication -- no more anonymous letters and phone calls. Most IRS employees are very well paid, and thus it is not unreasonable that they should be expected to take personal responsibility for each of their actions. The new Congress needs to take action regarding the abuse of asset forfeiture, particularly at the IRS, which has gone on far too long. No American should have his bank accounts or other assets seized without being convicted of wrongdoing in an appropriate court of law. The basic function of government is to protect person and property, not steal property from innocent citizens as the IRS and other government agencies have been doing for decades. As noted above, the OECD has been pushing for automatic exchange of tax information between governments, and this proposed protocol has been enthusiastically supported by the Obama administration. If the protocol is ratified by the Senate, it would be up to the administration to decide which countries would be privy to our private financial and tax information -- Russia, China, Venezuela or others. This would subject American citizens to blackmail, extortion, identity theft and other injustices by foreign governments and individuals within those governments who may be hostile to Americans. Officials in the administration assure us that they will protect the confidentially of our personal information and not share it with countries that will not protect it. Have they not heard of Edward Snowden? Private companies and individuals can be held liable for not protecting confidential information. There should be no lesser standard for those in government. It is called being accountable for one's words and actions. Congress could quickly get rid of many of the IRS outrages mentioned above if it would go to a territorial system of taxation (only taxing income earned inside the country's borders), which the vast majority of countries have done. It would eliminate the need for most cross-border information-sharing. Congress should immediately prohibit the IRS from asset forfeiture before conviction of wrongdoing. Nonprofit organization tax exemption or deduction should be automatic with the IRS only being allowed to take away exemptions after clear evidence of wrongdoing. Finally, if the current tax code were replaced with a simple flat-rate income or consumption tax, most of the abuse problems would go away -- and much liberty would be restored. Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

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Justice?

Eric Holder Bars Lead Investigator From Testifying Before Congress in IRS Probe

6/19/13: BIGGEST TEA PARTY AND PATRIOT PROTEST IN D.C. SINCE 2010

Tea Party Patriots: ‘The largest Tea Party protest since 2010 is tomorrow’

Only the I.R.S...

Only the IRS can attach 100% of a tax debtor's wages and/or property.

Only the IRS can invade the privacy of a citizen without court process of any kind.

Only the IRS can seize property without a court order.

Only the IRS can force a citizen to try his case in a special court governed by the IRS.

Only the IRS can compel the production of documents, records, and other materials without a court case being in existence.

Only the IRS can with impunity publish the details of a citizens debt.

Only the IRS can legally, without a court order, subject citizens to electronic surveillance.

Only the IRS can force waiver of statute of limitations and other citizen's rights through the threat of Arbitrary assesment.

Only the IRS uses extralegal coercion. Threats to witnesses to examine their taxes regularly produces whatever evidence the IRS dictates.

Only the IRS is free to violate a written agreement with a citizen.

Only the IRS uses reprisals against citizen and public officials alike.

Only the IRS can take property on the basis of conjecture.

Only the IRS is free to maintain lists of citizen guilty of no crime for the purpose of harassing and monitoring them.

Only the IRS envelops all citizens.

Only the IRS publicly admits that it's purpose is to instill fear in the citizenry as a technique of performing it's function."

George V. Hansen (1930-) US Congressman (R-ID)
Source: To Harass Our People, by George Hansen, (August 1993)

THE KILLING

From Deep Throat DHA Insider:

“How are they going to do this? How is it even possible” I asked.

“First, they intend to use the Justice Department to silence journalists like in the Rosen case, but they won’t stop there. They will use a host of national security policies, laws, letters, whatever to take out the bigger threats,” he stated.

Next, they will use some sort of excuse, an external threat, and I believe it will be a combination of the economic collapse and a Mid-East war that will begin in Syria to throttle the information that is accessible on the Internet. And you know what? People will believe it!”

Based on what I’ve seen, most of which I should not have seen, the DHS is co-ordinating efforts with other federal agencies to begin to threaten American citizens with incarceration for non-compliance. You know the old talk of color coded lists? Well, this is what they will be using. People exposing the truth about Benghazi, killing the U.S. Dollar, even those questioning Obama?s legal status and eligibility to be President are the current targets. And they’ve had five long years to get to this point. The ugly truth is that these policies and practices did not start under Obama, but long before. This is about the killing of our Constitutional Republic. The murder of our country and the stripping of our rights. While many have been preoccupied with one issue, few have seen the bigger issue. This is the ‘end game,’ for all the marbles,” he stated.

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Rush Limbaugh:

...clearly there's a coup d'etat going. You know it and I know it. This is what animates us. This is why the Tea Party exists. This country was founded on certain concepts, principles, beliefs -- and they're under assault. Chief among them under assault is the right to privacy, and that's what all this is about.

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IRS TIMELINE

Wall Street Journal:

President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups.

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IRS Intimidation - Are You Next?

5/29/13 - Cincinnati Tea Party (The Complete Two-Hour Event):

It’s something quite different when elites use the machinery of government against ordinary people...

It’s a whole different ball game.”

One more thing...

One of the reasons a lot of people in New York and Washington are not deeply distressed by the IRS targeting of conservative groups is that they have it in their heads that it only involved the tea party and the tea party is full of nuts, weirdoes and radicals whose discouragement wouldn’t be a grave national loss. It’s not only tea-party groups that were targeted, of course, but the IRS was only too happy to get the idea out there that it was. But if you’re the kind of person who thinks Tea Party people are low and extreme, that they’re the kind of people who’d hurt our country, take a few minutes to look at this. It’s a website that will take you to videos of a town hall meeting of the SouthWest Cincinnati Tea Party. It was held Wednesday night. Its subject was “IRS Intimidation—Are You Next?”

Do those people really strike you as weird and radical? Do they seem destructive? They are normal citizens. And they feel besieged.

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Whose felony is this anyway?

According to the Weekly Standard, if someone in the Obama administration were to look at a taxpayer's tax records, it would be a violation of a federal law that was enacted in 1976 in response to Watergate.

Although there have been many amendments to the law since that time, the basic statutory scheme established in 1976 remains in place today.

But the Weekly Standard reports that

In August 2010, Austan Goolsbee, serving at the time as economic adviser to President Obama, told reporters during an anonymous background briefing that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate income taxes.

There is no adequate explanation given why a member of the Obama administration would be privy to that information!

Then we learn that Political Hacks at the IRS Leaked Confidential Information on Conservatives to the Liberal Media Group ProPublica

Keep in mind that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) is under the US Department of the Treasury, in the Executive Branch (currently the Obama administration).

You can read for yourself and see what the IRS can and cannot do:

PUBLICATION 4639 (Rev 10-2012) Disclosure & Privacy Law Reference Guide

If you want a simple explanation of what the stakes are, read what (ironically) the IRS preaches about its own mission:

V. CONCLUSION

A distinguishing characteristic and, indeed, one of the strengths of American tax administration, is the self assessment feature of the system. Employees of the Office of Chief Counsel and the IRS must be constantly aware that in fostering this system, there must be public confidence with respect to the confidentiality of personal and financial information given to us for tax administration purposes.

Thus, we must administer the disclosure provisions of the internal revenue laws in accordance with the spirit and intent of the law, ever mindful of this public trust. The law makes the confidential relationship between the taxpayer and the IRS quite apparent. By the single act of filing a tax return, a record is created and also a trust. We are responsible for maintaining both.

There is probably no other government agency having as much contact with as many citizens as the IRS in the course of carrying out its responsibility of collecting the 1-18 revenue. As a result, a vast majority of our records are confidential in the very real sense that they represent information the American people have provided to their government in confidence. The confidential nature of these records requires that each request for information be evaluated in the light of a considerable body of law and regulations that either authorize or prohibit disclosure. The diversity of our records, the size of our organization, and the complexity of our operations, all contribute to the issues we must consider when performing our official duties.

How would YOU (Mr. & Mrs. Citizen) rate the Obama Administration's performance?

Or are you suddenly busy in the bathroom bending over your privy?

ANOTHER IRS SCANDAL

...there’s another IRS scandal waiting to gain widespread awareness, and this time it undeniably has Shumlan’s [sic] and MIller’s fingerprints all over it. The IRS is unconstitutionally implementing ObamaCare exchange subsidies in states that refuse to establish an exchange.

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“Last time I checked in America, prayers were still legal."

Wait Until You See the Questions on Prayer Asked of Lt. Col. Oliver North When Lois Lerner Was at the FEC in the 90s!

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The IRS & Executive Order 13522

RED STATE:

The questions that should be asked and answered do not stop with the convenient scapegoating of one already-leaving agency head, and a few “rogue” employees.

It will take a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of it.

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Disabled Veterans Have Checks Stolen By IRS

The IRS is still figuring out ways to get to a veteran’s disability money. How do I know? Recently, it happened to me.

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IRS: “What was the content of your prayers?” - UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt: THE HEARING

From THE RIGHT SCOOP:

Wow. This was an amazing speech by Rep. Mike Kelly as he puts this IRS scandal in the proper perspective, even questioning why the IRS Commissioner isn’t outraged by this. He tells the commissioner that this is a huge scandal because it reconfirms to the American people the things they fear about dealing with the IRS and calls it a huge blow to the faith and trust the American people have in their government.

Kelly’s speech was so good he gets a standing ovation at the end. Watch:

UPDATE:

MORE VIDEOS from Legal Insurrection.

MSM covers Obama administration's newest scandal - UPDATE

Thanks to a post over at Legal Insurrection, I'm posting two -- get this -- MSM (MAIN STREAM MEDIA) articles about the newest Obama administration scandal:

Washington Post [Editorial Board]

The agency said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.

Thankfully, it’s a safe bet that the decision on whether to answer such questions won’t rest solely with the agency for much longer.

and the New York Times

The historical term for this kind of anxiety is “Brown Scare” — an inordinate fear of a vast far-right conspiracy, which resembles the anti-Communist panics of our past.

UPDATE:

The New York Times obtained a 12-page timeline from the inspector general’s audit on Sunday. It suggests that the effort to single out Tea Party groups goes back to March 2010. . .

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HAT TIP: Hugh Hewitt

REPORT: Senior IRS officials knew that agents were targeting conservatives since 2011

And that IRS spokespersons are lying suggests how far up the conspiracy goes.

Healthcare Nazis: IRS to confiscate refunds if there are penalties for not buying health care

House Ways and Means Republicans on Thursday assailed a provision in the proposed health care reform bill under consideration this week.

Subcommittee on Oversight ranking member Charles Boustany (R-La.) said the IRS provision in the bill "dangerously expands, in an ominous way the tentacles of the IRS and it's reach into every American family," he said today during a press conference.

"This is a vast expanse of power," he said.

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How do you enforce a health-insurance mandate?

IRS!