Last week Congress held a hearing on the IRS refusing to return wrongly seized small business owners assets. Only the IRS could unite Democrats and Republicans this year, and once again the IRS managed to do so. As reported in The Hill:
“You’ve brought a subcommittee together who can’t agree about what time of day it is,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, which held a hearing on the topic.
“The capacity to treat people in the dismissive way in which the departments have treated them is the part that all of us really find just jarring,” Roskam added.
The top Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, agreed that this is a topic on which Democrats and Republicans are strongly united.
“On this issue, we are on one accord,” he said.
There’s not much to say on this. There are apparently more than 600 taxpayers who have had $43 million seized that are still waiting for their money to be returned. While the IRS has apparently apologized over this (Commissioner Koskinen has stated that’s been done), I suspect individuals would much prefer having their funds returned. Unfortunately, Kenneth Blanco, deputy assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice, could not give a time-frame when this would occur.
The only solution to these sorts of issues is a rule that imposes the same deadline and penalties on the IRS as are imposed on taxpayers. I’m not holding my breath on Congress enacting this.