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7/17/13, "Tea-Party Applications Reviewed by IRS Chief Counsel, According to Testimony," NRO, Eleana Johnson
"The applications of some tea-party groups for tax exemption are still
languishing at the Internal Revenue Service, where they have been reviewed by the chief counsel’s office and by a senior adviser to Lois
Lerner, the agency’s former director of Exempt Organizations, according
to the testimony of three Internal Revenue Services attorneys involved
in their processing. The IRS’s chief counsel, William Wilkins, is one of
two political appointees at the agency. His
office demanded information about the political activity of tea-party
groups “right before the [2010] election period,” and to this day has
yet to make a determination whether the groups qualify for tax
exemption, according to one IRS attorney.
The explosive
testimony comes from Carter Hull, a recently retired IRS attorney who
was charged with providing guidance to the Cincinnati agent processing
tea-party applications; his superviser, Ronald Shoemaker; and Michael
Seto, the manager of the Exempt Organizations Technical unit made up of
tax lawyers and based in Washington, D.C.
Hull began reviewing tea-party applications in April 2010. According to a partial
transcript of his interview with Oversight Committee investigators,
he felt he had enough information to make a determination on the
applications, but sometime in the winter of 2010–2011, the senior
advisor to Lois Lerner told him the IRS chief counsel’s office needed to
review the applications nonetheless. These were “test”
applications whose treatment would provide guidance for
agents processing the bulk of the tea-party applications.
Seto, Hull’s boss, told investigators applications were sent to the chief counsel’s office after Lerner
“sent me an e-mail saying that...these cases need to go through
multi-tier review and they will eventually have to go [through her
staff] and the chief counsel’s office.” Lerner’s senior adviser told
Hull the applications were to go “to the IRS chief counsel.”
Months
later, in August 2011, the chief counsel’s office held a meeting with
Hull in which officials indicated they would need updated information
from the tea-party groups before they could make a determination. “They
had it for a while and the information wasn’t as current as it should
be,” Hull said, adding that the request took him aback. Hull’s
superviser, Ronald Shoemaker, told investigators that the chief
counsel’s office sought information about the groups’ political activity
“right before the [2010] election period” and, to his knowledge, has to
this day — over three years since the applications were filed —
failed
to make a determination about whether they qualified for tax exemption.
Excerpts of the testimony provided by Hull, Shoemaker, and Seto came in a letter
sent from Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and Ways and Means
Committee chairman Dave Camp, along with their ranking members, to
acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel demanding documents from the chief
counsel’s office and any communications between the chief counsel’s
office and the White House.
The IRS’s “involvement and demands for information about political
activity during the 2010 election cycle appears to have caused
systematic delays in the processing of tea-party applications,” Issa
said Wednesday.
Hull will appear before the Oversight Committee
on Thursday as it holds another hearing on the IRS’s targeting of
tea-party groups. Elizabeth Hofacre, the Cincinnati agent charged with
processing tea-party applications, as well as the Treasury Department
inspector general J. Russell George and two of his TIGTA colleagues,
will also testify." via Powerline
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Comment: No Republican or Democrat in the criminal Beltway has the slightest interest in helping the Tea Party. Even if that weren't the case, absolutely no one is afraid of the pathetic Issa.
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