[EL] Wall Street Journal IRS Atmosphere Timeline

[Smith, Brad]

You don't understand what I write at all. Every thing you attribute to me below is incorrect. 

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Michael P McDonald [mmcdon at gmu.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 3:30 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Wall Street Journal IRS Atmosphere Timeline

So then, according to the Washington Post through more leaks of the IG report, a self-described conservative Republican working in the Cincinnati office began the practice of singling out the conservative applications.

What annoys me most about Brad's claims is that I and many others on this list work at government institutions, most of us at state universities. Brad is insinuating that all of us take political cues from above. That we are all without a shred of integrity. That is just plain insulting of all people who have sacrificed to work in public service. This list serve is a prime example of how vacuous Brad's argument is: why should a public university in a Democratic state offer a forum where conservatives can speak their wildest fantasies about the Obama administration? Rick, you'd better start censoring them or else you won't get the necessary good evaluations from your overlords. As an added bonus, it will just be fun to do.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

phone:   703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject


-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Smith, Brad
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 2:28 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Wall Street Journal IRS Atmosphere Timeline

This was part of a general campaign attacking the Kochs, tea party groups, and other elements of the right as tax cheats that were abusing the tax code in multiple ways. I've worked in the federal bureaucracy, at the top and at the bottom, and I've worked with it from the outside. It's not been hard to recognize that people take their cues, which is the point of Barnaby's post, as I read it. So what of it? What of it is that the administration (of which Goolsby's statement was one small part) and members in Congress worked to create a climate in which persons in the IRS might have begun to think that this behavior was any or all of:
a) acceptable
b) desired
c) necessary for promotion/good evaluations
d) allowed
e) good for America
f) something they could get away with if they wanted to do it anyway
g) justified
h) a high priority within the government
i) in the service of the Obama Administration
j) fun
k) other rationalization/justification



Bradley A. Smith
Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
   Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
303 E. Broad St.
Columbus, OH 43215
614.236.6317
http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Mark Schmitt [schmitt.mark at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 1:43 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Wall Street Journal IRS Atmosphere Timeline

I remember Austan Goolsbee well, what of it? He made a statement, which was wrong, that he "thought" Koch Industries was structured as an LLP or MLP. He was mistaken. It was a statement about tax policy, a reminder that some large companies aren't subject to the corporate income tax, which is true. As it turns out, his example was mistaken. The Koch Industries website shows that several of its large subsidiaries are LLCs, but the corporation itself is not.

What is the signal that you think low-level IRS employees would take from that misstatement about tax policy and public information?


Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute<http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
202/246-2350
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9


On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 10:27 AM, <BZall at aol.com<mailto:BZall at aol.com>> wrote:
No one seems to be reacting to the Wall Street Journal column attempting to use a timeline to explain how "low-level" IRS agents might find it necessary to scrutinize 1024s from some groups more than others, asking otherwise inappropriate questions about volunteers and individuals.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578529571309012846.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

This echoes a debate at last week's First Tuesday Lunch meeting where one set of public policy attorneys (my own term for lawyers who specialize in both campaign finance and exempt organization law) discussed with another set whether there was direction, either explicit or tacit, from the Administration. One set remembers Austan Goolsbee very well; others not so much, and the discrepancy taints the analysis of current events.

We have long known that the IRS reads the newspapers, as you would expect them to. The question is whether they consciously or unconsciously absorb some of the campaign rhetoric, and if they do, whether it is absorbed evenly or not. In an area where confirmation bias runs rampant, as evidenced by recent posts to this list, are we training IRS agents to avoid it? Even lawyers who read some IRS publications have no clue about how the political rules actually work. In many cases, it takes years to understand, just as you expect in any other complex area. There's no real evidence of that type of training in the IRS, and the TIGTA report indicates that training sessions were either late or incomplete. Was Judy Kindell, the resident guru on political matters in the IRS EO Division, consulted in 2009, when this whole mess began? Apparently the isolation of Cincinnati imposed by the 2003 IRS reorganization bore its bitter fruit, fertilized by a continual lack of resources, in that ti


 me period.

Perhaps the point is one also made at last week's lunch: the real problem here is that IRS Determs was using audit techniques instead of reviewing applications. That may have been because the agents were fearful that some of what was being said in the media (as opposed to the applications) was true, and sought to get to the bottom of it. That is not necessarily a bad thing if you are tasked with determining how organizations will operate in the future (itself an incredibly difficult task), particularly with charities. But these were c4s, where political activity is perfectly lawful. Audit techniques are likely inappropriate when an organization does not have a track record, and will only result in shutting down the smaller and newer organizations who can't afford the skilled counsel who can simply stare down the inappropriate questions or call the managers they already know to complain. It is all well-and-good to question the competence of low-level employees who made mistake


 s, but we should look at the system to see the real structural issues.

Barnaby Zall
Of Counsel
Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP
10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 500
Bethesda, MD 20817
301-231-6943<tel:301-231-6943> (direct dial)
bzall at aol.com<mailto:bzall at aol.com>
_____________________________________________________________
U.S. Treasury Circular 230 Notice

Any U.S. federal tax advice included in this communication (including
any attachments) was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be
used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding U.S. federal tax-related penalties
or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any
tax-related matter addressed herein.
_____________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election


_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election