Tag Archives: IRS

Internal Revenue Service to eliminate roughly 6% of the agency’s workforce

Important Takeaways:

  • A tearful executive at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service told staffers on Thursday that about 6,000 employees would be fired, a person familiar with the matter said, in a move that would eliminate roughly 6% of the agency’s workforce in the midst of the critical tax-filing season.
  • The layoffs are expected to total 6,700, according to a person familiar with the matter, and largely target workers at the agency hired as part of an expansion under Democratic President Joe Biden, who had sought to expand enforcement efforts on wealthy taxpayers.
  • The agency now employs roughly 100,000 people, up from 80,000 when he took office.
  • The workers being cut are in their probationary period and have fewer protections than career employees.
  • Those fired include revenue agents, customer-service workers, independent specialists who hear appeals of tax disputes, and IT workers, the sources said.

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DHS put in request to reassign IRS criminal investigators to perform deportation duties

ATF New York

Important Takeaways:

  • In her memo from last Friday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would like to use the IRS investigators to track down the financial dealings of human-traffickers who bring in illegals to take American jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
  • This is not the first time DHS has reached out to other agencies and asked them to assign help to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation duties. In a previous memo, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms was also tasked with giving a helping hand to ICE.
  • The IRS agents Noem requested have full police powers, carry firearms, have the power to arrest and detain people, and are a separate division from regular IRS enforcement officers and revenue agents.
  • The directive enabled the DOJ to assign federal law enforcement agencies to assist ICE in its removal operations and Homeland Security Investigations special agents in carrying out President Trump’s promise to initiate the largest deportation effort in history.
  • The DOJ then gave the U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Federal Bureau of Prisons the authority to investigate and apprehend illegal aliens.
  • “Mobilizing these law enforcement officials will help fulfill President Trump’s promise to the American people to carry out mass deportations,” the spokesperson continued. “For decades, efforts to find and apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources. This is a major step in fixing that problem.”

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Congress revoked additional $20 billion from Internal Revenue Service

IRS Building

Important Takeaways:

  • Congress revoked an additional $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service last week when lawmakers averted a government shutdown, a cut that may undo many of President Joe Biden’s efforts to improve customer service at the tax agency and train fresh scrutiny on wealthy tax cheats.
  • Biden and congressional Democrats gave the IRS $80 billion in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, but Congress rescinded $20 billion as part of a 2023 budget deal. Shortly afterward, Republicans vowed they’d be back for more IRS cuts.
  • And because of the way lawmakers extended government funding into March, an additional $20 billion in cuts came automatically.
  • When Congress approved a stopgap funding bill, called a continuing resolution, all the existing policy from the previous fiscal year was carried forward unless new text was specifically added to the bill to change it.
  • There was no language in the bill to undo last year’s cut, so it repeated in the new law.

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Media and Justice Department have been hiding the truth about Hunter’s laptop as IRS Whistleblowers come forth

Biden Impeachment Hearing

Important Takeaways:

  • The Justice Department, FBI, and IRS all knew the infamous Hunter Biden laptop “was real” immediately after it came to light and prosecutors told investigators not to ask questions about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, according to two whistleblowers.
  • IRS employees Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, both who previously testified before Congress, spoke to investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in their first interview since Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges to avoid facing another criminal trial months after being convicted in a separate gun case.
  • The infamous “laptop from hell” was originally abandoned by first son Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop before being retrieved and authenticated by the FBI.
  • In October 2020, the New York Post first reported the abandoned laptop included of influence-peddling, drug use, and other lurid activity.
  • Government officials, social media companies, and the mainstream media refused to acknowledge the authenticity of the laptop, instead saying it was part of a Russian disinformation effort.
  • In July 2023, the FBI’s section chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force testified before a House panel that the bureau knew the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election.
  • Shapley and Ziegler told Herridge federal investigators faced “a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election.”
  • They also told the reporter:
  • “The prosecutors … told us that they didn’t want to ask about ‘The Big Guy.'”
  • “We corroborated that ‘The Big Guy’ was Joe Biden. Yes.”
  • “There was no question ever that ‘The Big Guy’ was referring to Joe Biden.”
  • “It was for the purpose of affecting that [2020] election.”
  • The two whistleblowers alleged there is disparate treatment of taxpayers by the IRS and a double standard at the Justice Department for the handling of presidential campaigns.
  • Herridge also reported that an internal IRS email shows the whistleblowers’ supervisor celebrated the Hunter Biden guilty plea, calling it a “great conviction” even though the whistleblower say they have been punished for coming forward by superiors.
  • “Those are words that are not supported by the actions of the agency,” Herridge was told.
  • “This to me was someone who knows that [an] IRS watchdog right now is looking into the way that they’ve handled this and they see the writing on the wall, and this really is an example of just covering their backside like a true bureaucracy.”

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Was the Respect for Marriage Act a trick to get 87,000 IRS Agents in the doors of Christian Colleges, Churches? Many sounding the alarm

Matthew 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Important Takeaways:

  • Concerns Over 87,000 New IRS Agents Mounting After Senator Demanded the IRS Target Conservatives
  • In an exclusive report, The Daily Signal, the media arm of The Heritage Foundation, reports a total of 176 pages of correspondence from and to the Rhode Island senator [Sheldon Whitehouse] obtained from the IRS by the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation through the Freedom of Information Act.
  • “Tax-exempt status provides a substantial benefit to charitable organizations and reflects the federal government’s endorsement of an organization’s activities,” Whitehouse wrote to the IRS chief. “Organizations that knowingly put in danger minors entrusted to their care should not enjoy the benefits of tax-exempt status. Accordingly, I urge the IRS to review whether it should revoke Turning Point USA’s tax-exempt status.”
  • Meanwhile, conservatives are also sounding an alarm over the new Respect for Marriage Act passed by the U.S. Senate
  • In a statement, Jason Yates, CEO of My Faith Votes, warned “Religious institutions like churches, Christian colleges, faith-based nonprofit organizations, and Christian small businesses will undoubtedly face unending lawsuits and government harassment like IRS investigations for adhering to a biblical worldview. Perhaps this is why the Biden administration is amassing a small army of 87,000 new IRS agents,” the statement concluded.

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MSNBC Host projects that ‘Civil War is here’

Revelations 2:5 “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘Civil war is here’ thanks to ‘MAGA mob’: MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross
  • It was the second time in a week Cross invoked fears of a ‘civil war’ having already started in the U.S.
  • Cross made the incendiary remarks in her opening monologue
  • “In the last two weeks threats against the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have surged and even some GOP senators are getting in on the act, depicting number crunchers at the IRS as thought they’ll be bursting through doors like the Kool-Aid man for tax infractions.”
  • “The spike of violent rhetoric on MAGA message boards is reminiscent of what occurred before the deadly January 6 insurrection. We all remember that,” she said, before making her stunning pronouncement.
  • “It’s not like the civil war is coming, it feels like the civil war is here,” Cross declared.
  • The host made a similar claim earlier this week when she guest hosted for MSNBC’s “The ReidOut.” “People keep saying a civil war is coming, I would say a civil war is here,” she stated during the broadcast.

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Inflation Reduction Act expanded IRS budget by 600%. Some claim this investment will bring in more than $200 billion in revenue. But from who?

  • An IRS Army of 87,000 New Enforcers and ‘700,000 New Audits’ on Middle-Class Americans?
  • $80 billion to expand the IRS, including tens of thousands of new IRS enforcers
  • The bill is set to more than double the IRS’ current workforce, making it one of the largest federal agencies and increasing its budget by roughly 600 percent.
  • “Democrats claim this ‘investment’ will yield more than $200 billion in revenue. That estimate is highly speculative, but if it’s anywhere close to right, IRS auditors will soon be coming after tens of millions of Americans.”
  • “Democrats want to make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined,” Cruz wrote. “That’s a terrible idea. We should abolish the IRS!”
  • And Joel Griffith with the Heritage Foundation confirms, “If you look at the past, the audits disproportionately impact those that are middle class, upper middle-class income earners. Those are the ones who get targeted by this.”
  • The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that’s a legitimate concern for the middle class, writing, “The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official tax scorekeeper, says that from 78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year. Only 4% to 9% would come from those making more than $500,000.”

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U.S. senators ask IRS if hacking campaign compromised taxpayer data

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two top U.S. Senators on Thursday said they were seeking answers on whether the recent hacking attack against the federal government compromised U.S. taxpayers’ data, which could make millions of Americans more vulnerable to identity theft and other crimes.

As officials continued to assess damage from the cyberattack, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Ron Wyden asked the Internal Revenue Service whether the tax agency was affected and, if so, what it was doing to mitigate the fallout and protect against further intrusions.

The sweeping campaign, done by hackers believed to be working for Russia, leveraged technology from SolarWinds Corp used by multiple U.S. government agencies and other businesses, Reuters has reported.

The U.S. government has not publicly identified who might be behind the massive intrusion, and several U.S. lawmakers on Thursday said it appeared that U.S. officials were still analyzing the impact of the attack.

“I think the government is still assessing how bad the damage is,” Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, told MSNBC in an interview.

Grassley and Wyden, in their letter, sought an immediate briefing from IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig on the impact to U.S. taxpayers, whose sensitive financial records are filed each year with the agency.

The IRS has used SolarWinds technology as recently as 2017, they said.

“Given the extreme sensitivity of personal taxpayer information entrusted to the IRS, and the harm both to Americans’ privacy and our national security that could result from the theft and exploitation of this data by our adversaries, it is imperative that we understand the extent to which the IRS may have been compromised,” the senators wrote.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. direct payments likely to begin April 13: House panel

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans should start receiving direct deposit payments from the U.S. government around April 13 to help them cope with the coronavirus pandemic, but others may have to wait until mid-September to receive paper checks, according to a key congressional committee.

The government is expected to distribute 60 million payments of up to $1,200 per individual using bank deposit information gleaned from 2018 and 2019 income tax filings during the week of April 13, according to a memo from Democrats on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.

But it will not begin to send out paper checks to those who do not have bank deposit information on file until about 21 days later on May 4, according to the memo, which was reviewed by Reuters.

The IRS expects to issue checks at a rate of about 5 million a week, meaning that some Americans may have to wait 20 weeks. Under the schedule, the last checks would not arrive until around Sept. 21.

“This timeline is subject to change,” the memo noted.

The money is intended to help individuals and families offset the economic impact of the pandemic. Government officials hope to see the coronavirus die out during the warmer summer months, though health experts have warned of a possible resurgence in the fall.

(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Andy Sullivan, Chizu Nomiyama and Leslie Adler)

House Democrats to test Republicans on Trump’s wall demand

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) arrives for a House Democratic party caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. January 9, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On the 19th day of a partial U.S. government shutdown, Democrats were set on Wednesday to test Republicans’ resolve in backing President Donald Trump’s drive to build a wall on the border with Mexico, which has sparked an impasse over agency funding.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats, who took control of the chamber last week, plan to advance a bill to immediately reopen the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several other agencies that have been partially shut down since Dec. 22.

Democrats are eager to force Republicans to choose between funding the Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service – at a time when it should be gearing up to issue tax refunds to millions of Americans – and voting to keep it partially shuttered.

In a countermove, the Trump administration said on Tuesday that even without a new shot of funding, the IRS would somehow make sure those refund checks get sent.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump was still considering a declaration of a national emergency to circumvent Congress and redirect government funds toward the wall.

The Republican president’s push for a massive barrier on the border has dominated the Washington debate and sparked a political blame game as both Trump and Democrats remain dug in.

In a nationally televised address on Tuesday night, Trump asked: “How much more American blood must be shed before Congress does its job?” referring to murders he said were committed by illegal immigrants.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell opened the Senate on Wednesday with an attack on Democrats for not supporting Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for the wall.

But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s speech was a rehash of spurious arguments and misleading statistics.

“The president continues to fearmonger and he makes up the facts,” Schumer said.

DEMOCRATIC TACTICS

Later in the week, Pelosi plans to force votes that one-by-one provide the money to operate departments ranging from Homeland Security and Justice to State, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor.

By using a Democratic majority to ram those bills through the House, Pelosi is hoping enough Senate Republicans back her up and abandon Trump’s wall gambit.

The political maneuvering comes amid a rising public backlash over the suspension of some government activities that has resulted in the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Other “essential” employees are being required to report to work, but without pay for the time being.

As House Democrats plow ahead, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to attend a weekly closed lunch meeting of Senate Republicans.

They are expected to urge them to hold firm on his wall demands, even as some are publicly warning their patience is wearing thin.

Later in the day, Trump is scheduled to host bipartisan congressional leaders to see if they can break the deadlock. On Thursday, Trump travels to the border to highlight an immigration “crisis” that his base of conservative supporters wants him to address.

With tempers running high over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion just for this year to fund wall construction, there are doubts Pelosi’s plan will succeed in forcing the Senate to act.

McConnell has not budged from his hard line of refusing to bring up any government funding bill that does not have Trump’s backing even as a few moderate members of his caucus have called for an end to the standoff.

The funding fight stems from Congress’ inability to complete work by a Sept. 30, 2018, deadline on funding all government agencies. It did, however, appropriate money for about 75 percent of the government by that deadline – mainly military and health-related programs.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott and Alistair Bell)