Taxable Talk

The IRS scandal is now linked into the White House. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a “senior White House official” was told around April 22nd of the results of the TIGTA audit (note: Link is for subscribers of the WSJ). Kathryn Ruemmler, White House Chief Counsel, was told by Treasury Department attorneys that there was improper scrutiny of Tea Party and conservative organizations.

President Obama stated that he didn’t learn of the scandal until everyone did. I think the chance of that is about zero: I find it impossible to believe that Ms. Ruemmler didn’t tell the President when she learned of this. The bigger question is whether the scandal originated in the White House. I also find it hard to believe that two (or four) low level bureaucrats in Cincinnati decided on their own to target conservative groups.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that there’s surprise among the IRS employees in Cincinnati over the scandal. “Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.” The IRS employees interviewed believed it was middle managers who decided to implement this policy. That may well be the case, or it could be that they got directives. Sooner or later the full details will come out on this scandal.

Tags: IRS.Scandal

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 19th, 2013 at 7:43 pm and is filed under IRS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.