Freedom Line Blog

In an interview with CFIF, Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, discusses damaging emails between IRS official Lois Lerner and DOJ employees, misleading numbers in ObamaCare, and another delay with the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Listen to the interview here.

In recent weeks, we’ve highlighted the pernicious effort to make the Internal Revenue Service not only the nation’s tax enforcer, but also its tax preparer:

This IRS scheme is part of a broader, ongoing campaign to socialize the tax preparation business in America entirely, which would ultimately make it the nation’s one-stop-shop tax preparation service.   That would obviously create a conflict of interest with the IRS serving as both tax preparer and tax collector, and it would surely result in higher tax calculations to facilitate wasteful federal spending.”

Believe it or not, however, some continue to assert that it’s an idea whose time has come.  Because, according to ProPublica, Barack Obama supports it and the Europeans do it.  And allegedly, the notoriously tax- and bureaucracy-loving Ronald Reagan was also an enthusiast.

But Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform, one of the most informed and cogent tax experts in contemporary public discourse, throws cold water on the idea in a new commentary entitled “Top Seven Reasons the IRS Shouldn’t Do Your Taxes for You”:

The basic argument is always the same: the IRS has all this information on you anyway, so wouldn’t it just be easier and better if they simply prepared your taxes for you?  Wouldn’t that be better than having to pay some rent-seeking middleman?  This flawed line of thinking fools many a reporter this time of year, but it’s refuted pretty easily once you scratch beneath the surface.”

In trademark fashion, Ellis details those seven reasons in clear, convincing form.  It’s well worth the quick read on an issue that is becoming increasingly important.

But his conclusion is worth particular emphasis:

The bottom line. These tired, annual articles from white collar lefty pseudo-academics living in the Beltway all ignore the really big story here: namely, that it’s a giant conflict of interest for the IRS to determine your tax liability, and then to be able to seize your wages and assets in order to collect that tax liability.  To ignore that is to be criminally-naive about the way the IRS goes about its business.  It betrays either a lack of knowledge of how the tax system actually works, or it’s a giant con job by people whose common cause with the IRS is growing the size of government.

Demonizing the tax prep industry doesn’t change any of the arguments from above.  It does, however, provide a thin shield of self-righteousness for what is otherwise a fool’s errand.”

As Tax Day approaches, consider the bright side – at least there’s no ObamaCare form you have to fill out.

That changes next year.

“According to the agency, the IRS plans to include a specific line on the 1040 forms for taxpayers to ‘self-attest’ whether they purchased insurance,” reports Fox News. “It will most likely include a worksheet for taxpayers to calculate how much they owe – essentially either a flat penalty or a percentage of their income.”

Next year the penalty is either $95 or 1 percent of your income, whichever is greater.

The IRS plans to confirm whether taxpayers are telling the truth about purchasing insurance by getting enrollment records from insurance companies.

So along with increased paperwork, we can all look forward to a greater amount of government surveillance into our insurance (and eventually our health) records.

All in the name of helping us. Thank you, Big Brother.

This morning Healthcare.gov – the federal ObamaCare website serving citizens in 34 states – went down for four hours, stymieing customers from accessing or completing their applications for insurance.

NBC News reports that people unable to log onto the website were put in a “queue,” meaning they would be notified by email when they could resume the enrollment process.

But with the deadline to begin an application (supposedly) ending at midnight, what will happen to people unable to return to their computer screens after the lengthy delay? Last week’s extension to mid-April only covers people who start the process for enrolling by the end of March. If other commitments – say family or work responsibilities – don’t allow an applicant to return, what then? How will federal regulators distinguish between people who never tried to use Healthcare.gov and those that did, but for various reasons beyond their control couldn’t finish?

If history is any guide, don’t expect the feds to make a distinction. More likely, the response sometime soon will be a blanket extension for enrollment that allows anyone – without precondition – to complete the process.

Then it will be the IRS whose head will spin. When it comes to enrolling on an ObamaCare exchange, the carrots are the subsidies and the sticks are the fines. Any adult that goes without health insurance for three consecutive months is subject to a fine of $95 or 1 percent of her annual income, whichever is higher. And since that fee gets levied at next year’s tax filing, it will be the IRS’ job to sort out who is subject to the penalty.

That is, as soon as the political operatives in the Obama administration decide when enrollment really, really – no really we’re serious this time! – ends.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino explains how a pending lawsuit challenging certain ObamaCare IRS subsidies not explicitly authorized in the Affordable Care Act could doom the entire health care law.

Up to 38% of people who qualify for Obamacare exchange subsidies may have to pay some or all of the money back to the IRS. That’s because the amount of subsidy dispensed is based on a sliding scale. As income rises, the amount of subsidy decreases. In practice, many people who currently qualify for a subsidy could wind up paying back the amount if they earn just a little bit more in income.

“At biggest risk are people who annual household income put them near the thresholds where the Obamacare subsidies make steep declines,” explains AEI expert Scott Gottlieb. “These cliffs are steepest for those people who earn 150% of the federal poverty level (family of four earning $35,000 in annual household income); 250% (a family of four earning about $55,000 annually); and 400% (a family of four earning about $95,000 annually).”

The upshot of this is that people may become much more sensitive to family budgeting since their financial stability depends on which side of the subsidy wall they fall. The downside of course is that we’re likely to start seeing people decline job promotions and salary hikes to avoid becoming a net loser at tax time.

As I’ve noted before, Obamacare’s War on Work is just beginning.

In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that aired on Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama declared that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” with regard to the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.

The American people are not buying it.

According to a Fox News poll released last week, a whopping 64 percent of registered voters, including a majority of Democrats, think the targeting scandal does suggest corruption at the IRS.  A mere 27 percent don’t view the IRS’s targeting as corrupt.

When questioned about whether Congress should continue to investigate the IRS scandal, an even greater majority says “Yes!”

Majorities of Republicans (83 percent), independents (72 percent) and Democrats (60 percent) agree lawmakers should persist until they ‘feel they know the truth.’

For the poll results, click here.

In an interview with CFIF, Peter Roff, contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, discusses the Obama Administration’s use of the IRS to silence its critics by limiting the First Amendment rights of tax exempt groups.

Listen to the interview here.

In an interview with CFIF, Bradley A. Smith, former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission and Founder and Chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, discusses the latest IRS power grab – proposed IRS rules that, if approved, will severely limit the free speech rights of 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organizations.

Listen to the interview here.

In an interview with CFIF, Charles C. Johnson, investigative journalist and researcher, discusses the IRS’s most recent proposed rules regarding political activity of non-profit social welfare organizations, and what can be done about the latest IRS scandals ranging from targeting of conservative groups to leaking of tax information.

Listen to the interview here.

In celebration of Thanksgiving, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance named its annual “Turkeys of the Year.” The awards are presented in recognition of federal programs and agencies that have proven to be real turkeys for taxpayers, gobbling up tax dollars and giving hard working Americans the bird.

Among this year’s “Turkeys of the Year” are the IRS, Obamacare and the Export-Import Bank. Check out the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s short video to see just why these three boondoggles were so deserving of the shameful award.

How’s this for a snapshot of ObamaCare’s priorities?

Since the controversial health law passed in March 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has hired 1,684 new employees.

Of those, 86 are criminal investigators while only two are consumer safety officers.

The numbers come from HHS data extracted by a Freedom of Information Request by The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.

Bear in mind, HHS’s health cops are in addition to the estimated 16,500 new agents the Internal Revenue Service is seeking to fulfill its ObamaCare policing mandate.

There are, of course, better, much less intrusive ways to do health reform.

“People would voluntarily purchase the health insurance of their choice with basic subsidies. Additional special assistance could be targeted to help those with low incomes and/or high risk-based premium costs in purchasing health insurance,” according to Thomas Miller of the American Enterprise Institute.

Instead of the demanding detailed financial and health information from millions of Americans, Miller proposes treating ObamaCare health insurance subsidies like other income tax issues, so that only “a tiny fraction of taxpayers would be subject to mostly random audits to ensure that their tax subsidies for insurance are being spent appropriately.”

Miller’s solution would nix the need for all the new ObamaCare investigators. Eliminating the 86 new HHS hires would save taxpayers approximately $138.8 million annually.

But that would mean less oversight and control for the federal government, which, as we are seeing with the rise in police-related hiring at HHS and IRS, is not a priority under ObamaCare.

How often do the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Elections Commission share information about non-profit political groups?

If the question seems highly unusual that’s because it is. Ordinarily, there is no reason for the two federal agencies to communicate about a private entity, yet evidence is mounting that IRS and FEC officials had several conversations about politically conservative non-profit groups.

To recall, the IRS has the power to grant or strip a group’s non-profit status, and the FEC is the main arbiter of political speech. If there is evidence of coordination between these two agencies to discriminate against associations because of their viewpoint, a whole new level of government corruption will emerge.

To find out the truth, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is requesting “All documents and communications between or among any FEC official or employee and any IRS official or employee for the period January 1, 2008, to the present.”

If past experience with the Obama administration is any guide, House committee staff could be in for a lot of reading.

In the days since a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, liberal politicians and pundits have tried to argue that without the state’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law providing a defense, Zimmerman would be guilty.

The problem with this argument is that Zimmerman’s lawyers never invoked ‘Stand Your Ground’ as a defense in the trial. ‘Stand Your Ground’ was irrelevant to the verdict.

But that hasn’t stopped liberals like Attorney General Eric Holder from using the mere existence of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws as a pretext for unmerited lawsuits. In a speech to the NAACP this week, Holder encouraged members of the NAACP to agitate for the repeal of such laws in the 30+ states where they exist.

Now, Congress is upping the ante.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) is promising to hold congressional hearings about the effects of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws, including such topics as “when racial profiling and ‘stand your ground’ laws mix,” according to a press release.

Amid all the racially charged theater, Durbin also announced what has to be his real motive behind the hearings – scrutinizing the roles that the NRA and ALEC played in promoting ‘Stand Your Ground’ legislation.

Durbin has no right to subject either organization to an investigative fishing expedition designed to criticize private groups for exercising their First Amendment rights. If Durbin follows through with his threat, someone in the Senate GOP needs to throw some brush-back pitches in Dick’s direction. After the politician-inspired IRS scandal, it’s time for liberals to be held accountable for their wild-eyed accusations.

The reliably great Johan Goldberg’s newest column considers liberal outrage over the NSA surveillance scandal and comes to what strikes me as an utterly reasonable conclusion: if you’re a leftist who’s bothered by this sort of invasiveness, there’s a whole world of outrages awaiting you upon inspection of President Obama’s domestic record:

What I have a hard time understanding, however, is how one can get worked up into a near panic about an overreaching national-security apparatus while also celebrating other government expansions into our lives, chief among them the hydra-headed leviathan of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). The 2009 stimulus created a health database that will store all your health records. The Federal Data Services Hub will record everything bureaucrats deem useful, from your incarceration record and immigration status to whether or not you had an abortion or were treated for depression or erectile dysfunction.

In other words, while the NSA can tell if you searched the Web for “Viagra,” the Hub will know if you were actually prescribed the medication and for how long. Yes, there are rules for keeping that information private, but you don’t need security clearance or a warrant to get it.

Then there’s the IRS. We already have evidence of abuse there. For instance, the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, had its tax returns and private donor information leaked to the news media last year, presumably in order to embarrass Mitt Romney (he gave the group $10,000) and others during the presidential election.

And yet, worrying about NSA abuse is cast as high-minded, while worrying about Obamacare or the IRS is seen as paranoid. Why?

The answer, it seems to me, lies in the ideological priors of those doing the complaining. Unlike conservatives, liberals default to an essentially benevolent view of government and those that populate it — unless they happen to work in fields concerned with public safety, such as the military, intelligence, or law enforcement.

For my money, they all deserve scrutiny. But the track record also shows that the government officials who give the left night terrors are the ones that tend, on balance, to be the most responsible. Why? Well, I’d argue because they’re the only ones who retain a sense of that abstract virtue known as duty.

Lois Lerner impliedly waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to a party-line vote in the House Government Oversight Committee today.

Lerner entered a brief statement declaring her innocence before invoking the Fifth Amendment during a May 14 appearance before the committee to discuss her role in the IRS scandal targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

Soon after, Lerner was placed on administrative leave from the IRS.

The resolution is the first step in a process that could result in a Contempt of Congress citation against Lerner. If so, she would be the second Obama administration political appointee to receive the highest form of censure by a congressional chamber.

The other person: Attorney General Eric Holder.

H/T: Washington Post

The Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats and liberals generally may claim that the IRS scandal is essentially resolved, that “there’s no there there.”  The American people disagree, and in growing numbers.

According to a Rasmussen survey released today, some 70% now believe that the unconstitutional and criminal targeting originated in Washington, not some insular Cincinnati cubicle:

While the controversy over the National Security Agency surveillance program has dominated the news recently, concern about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations remains high and is inching up.  Despite the large number of controversies engulfing official Washington, the number of people following the IRS scandal has actually increased in recent weeks.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 82% of voters nationwide are now following the IRS targeting story, including 44% who are following the story ‘Very Closely.’  The overall number of voters who are following is up from 74% a month ago.”

It seemed as though the cascade of Obama Administration scandals might paradoxically mitigate the gravity of any one of them individually.  But from this poll and Obama’s plummeting approval numbers, it appears that a healthier sense of sobriety prevails, at least for now.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Here’s a troubling prospect: Americans who want to assert their rights of religious conscience will have to go through the famously scrupulous Internal Revenue Service to do so. Ashley E. McGuire writing in the Weekly Standard:

On August 1, the one-year “safe harbor” for religious charities objecting to provisions of Obamacare will end. Starting then, these nonprofit employers will be forced to violate their religious beliefs or pay large fines. In charge of collecting the fines will be our recently newsworthy friends at the Internal Revenue Service.

… Faced with the public outcry, the government did allow nonexempt religious organizations​—​hospitals, universities, charities, and so on​—​a year to get over their scruples and figure out how to comply. That year ends on August 1, when another 30 or so lawsuits filed by objecting nonprofits will be activated. But now, enter stage left: the IRS.

The way the regulation is written, it is the IRS that determines whether an organization qualifies for full exemption from the HHS mandate. To qualify, an organization must be a nonprofit as described in section 6033(a)(1) and section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii) (oh, my!) of the amended Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and therefore exempt from filing Form 990, which most nonprofits must file annually.

The good news: in the short term, the IRS is likely to be so conscious of the extra scrutiny it’s under because of the scandal involving tea party groups that it applies an exceedingly light tough in dealing with organizations trying to gain exemption from the mandate. The bad news: wayward government agencies, like misbehaving children, have a tendency to straighten up and fly right only as long as they know they’re being observed.

Even if the IRS discharges this duty with as much objectivity as possible, however, it doesn’t alleviate the underlying problem. No bureaucrat — nor any politician, for that matter — should possess power so sweeping that they get to decide whether or not someone’s religious beliefs earn indulgence from the state. It’s government at its most intrusive. And it’s one more reason that the contraception mandate — and Obamacare with it — needs to be discarded.