http://www.silverdoctors.com/ann-barnhardt-declare-federal-tax-strike-abolish-the-irs/
Ann Barnhardt, who last summer warned SD readers that “If you’re still in these markets you’re either stupid or on drugs!” before the first sign of bail-in risk to depositors emerged in Western markets is back with another explosive interview with Elijah Johnson.
In the wake of the recent IRS scandal targeting tea-party groups, Barnhardt discusses her tax revolt against the IRS, declares a federal tax strike, and promotes an idea Ron Paul has promoted for years: Abolish the IRS!
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, released more than 200 pages of interview transcripts Tuesday afternoon after the committee's Chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), refused to do so.
and will the IRS tax Bitcoin ? ......
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/17/GAO-IRS-Could-Tax-Virtual-Currencies
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/the-largest-tea-party-protest-since-2010-is-tomorrow/#ixzz2Waezq1K6
ANN BARNHARDT: DECLARE FEDERAL TAX STRIKE, ABOLISH THE IRS?
Ann Barnhardt, who last summer warned SD readers that “If you’re still in these markets you’re either stupid or on drugs!” before the first sign of bail-in risk to depositors emerged in Western markets is back with another explosive interview with Elijah Johnson. In the wake of the recent IRS scandal targeting tea-party groups, Barnhardt discusses her tax revolt against the IRS, declares a federal tax strike, and promotes an idea Ron Paul has promoted for years: Abolish the IRS!
http://www.businessinsider.com/irs-scandal-transcripts-obama-tea-party-targeting-2013-6
Darrell Issa Furious After Democrat Releases IRS Transcript That Blows Up His Investigation
AP
Cummings is seeking to dispel any notion that targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service was ordered from Washington.
Cummings released transcripts with an IRS screening group manager described as a "conservative Republican," who said that the targeting of the Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status started with low-level workers in Cincinnati. The witness also said that there was no communication on the targeting with any senior IRS officials or with anyone in Washington or the Obama administration.
Democrats have posted the key portion of the transcript here, in which the manager says he initially was made aware of a case involving a Tea Party group when an agent "asked for guidance." He agreed with the agent that there "wasn't enough information" to determine whether the group should have a tax-exempt status, and said he elevated the issue to his "area manager."
The manager also said an official in the exempt organizations division in Washington was "pleased with the decision to elevate this case," but suggested there wasn't a political role in the targeting.
"I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do other than consistency and identifying issues that needed to have further development," the manager said.
He also told the Oversight Committee that he believed no one from the White House was involved in the IRS' screening of Tea Party groups.
From Page 141 of the transcripts:
House Oversight Committee
The release of the transcripts came after two weeks of back-and-forth squabbling between Cummings and Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who Cummings accused of selectively releasing portions of the transcripts.
Cummings called on Issa to release the entire transcripts, which Issa said would harm the investigation. Cummings asked him for specific reasons, and demanded he respond by Monday. When Issa didn't respond, Cummings released the entirety of the transcripts.
Issa's office also did not respond to requests from multiple media outlets — including this one — that asked whether he would eventually release full transcripts.
"I believe releasing this transcript serves the best interest of Congress and the American people by ensuring that there is an accurate and fair picture of the management challenges facing the IRS and that recommendations for legislative reform are appropriately crafted to address the specific problems identified as a result of our oversight efforts," Cummings said in a statement along with the release of the transcripts.
Issa immediately decried the release of the transcripts, saying he was "deeply disappointed" at Cummings' decision. He said their release would encourage IRS officials to "navigate investigative interviews" with Congress.
"After unsuccessfully trying to convince the American people that IRS officials in Washington did not play a role in inappropriate scrutiny of Tea Party groups and declaring on national television that the case of IRS targeting was ‘solved’ and Congress should ‘move on,’ this looks like flailing," Issa said. "Americans who think Congress should investigate IRS misconduct should be outraged by Mr. Cummings’ efforts to obstruct needed oversight."
Dems release their own IRS transcripts
By RACHAEL BADE | 6/18/13 3:18 PM EDT Updated: 6/18/13 5:48 PM EDT
Leaders on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are escalating the battle over the investigation into the IRS tea party-targeting scandal with new transcripts that suggest Cincinnati agents first flagged tea party groups on their own.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s top Democrat, released hundreds of pages of transcripts on Tuesday of an interview the committee conducted with a self-described “conservative Republican” IRS nonprofit screening manager in Cincinnati. He told the committee one of his employees was the first to single out a tea party group applying for a tax exemption because it was “high profile” and had received media attention.
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And he said he agreed with the decision.
“In this particular case, it was apparent that there was not enough information that was allowing [redacted name] to make … the proper determination,” he said. “I told him at that point in time I agreed with this thinking, and to give me the particulars of the case, and that I would elevate that issue to my area manager.”
Though the transcript doesn’t reveal the name of the interview subject, John Shafer is the only screening manager the committee has questioned.
This is the first full transcript of a congressional interview with an IRS employee to be released since the agency became engulfed in scandal last month. The move is intensifying divisions between Cummings and oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that have surfaced in recent weeks.
“I am deeply disappointed that ranking member Cummings has decided to broadly disseminate and post online a 205-page transcript that will serve as a road map for IRS officials to navigate investigative interviews with Congress,” Issa said in a statement.
Cummings has accused Issa of cherry-picking loaded details gleaned from the committee’s investigation to back up the GOP argument that the IRS targeting practice was orchestrated from Washington. Issa released selected transcripts as recently as this weekend to back up that contention.
Cummings admits that Washington played a role in the scandal but in a letter to Issa today, he said it’s time to put to rest “accusations of a conspiracy orchestrated by the White House to target the president’s political enemies.”
The latest transcripts were released on the same day that a CNN/ORC International survey found that 47 percent of Americans believe “senior White House officials” ordered the IRS to single out conservative groups — a 10 percent increase from last month.
Investigators have found no evidence suggesting the Obama administration was in any way involved, though interviews with other Cincinnati employees shared with POLITICO suggest that IRS headquarters played a central role in carrying out the targeting after it began — contrary to what the IRS argued when the scandal erupted last month.
Shafer said a Washington official in the exempt organizations division — which oversees tax-exempt nonprofits — was “pleased with the decision to elevate this case.”
Shafer told oversight he did not believe the White House was involved in the IRS screening.
“I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do other than consistency and identifying issues that needed to have further development,” he said.
He also said he didn’t think any of his colleagues were singling out conservatives because of political bias.
When asked if he was “aware of political motivations behind the screenings, centralizing and development of tea party cases,” he responded: “I’m not aware of that.”
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In a five-hour interview, Shafer said it’s common for IRS agents elevate “high-profile” cases that could receive media attention — including cases involving celebrities — to their superiors, like he did in February 2010.
“I think it behooves us to make sure that these cases are going to be assigned to the appropriate individual with the utmost scrutiny,” he said of the big-name groups.
After elevating the first case, Shafer said he told three screening agents under him about what happened — meetings he called his “normal course of business” — and asked them to be “aware” and instructed them to hold similar cases for further instruction.
The message went to the whole screening group, and two weeks later, his employees had reported another 10 similar cases to him — a new “tea party” batch that he flagged for Washington.
When pushed by investigators if he gave employees an order to specifically look for groups with the name “tea party” in them, he said no.
“If it was a tea party movement, that in itself … would not have been something that I would have instructed anyone to put into another inventory,” he said. “It depends on the issue and what they were doing.”
But that testimony, oversight Republicans point out, contradicts what Gary Muthert, one of Shafers’s screeners, told the panel.
Muthert — who also told the panel he decided on his own to expand “tea party” to “tea party patriot” and “912” and other similar phrases — said Shafer instructed him to search for groups with “tea party” in the name.
and will the IRS tax Bitcoin ? ......
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE: IRS COULD TAX 'VIRTUAL CURRENCIES'
by WARNER TODD HUSTON 18 Jun 2013, 2:07 PM PDT 28POST A COMMENT
A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that the Internal Revenue Service should do more to warn taxpayers that they could have some tax liability over their holdings in Internet-based "virtual currencies" like Linden Dollars or Bitcoins.
On May 15, the GAO released a report ordered by the Senate Committee on Finance entitled, "Virtual Economies and Currencies."
"Transactions within virtual economies or using virtual currencies could produce taxable income in various ways, depending on the facts and circumstances of each transaction," the report warns.
The GAO points out that online currencies that exist only within a certain program--like the "cash" used to buy weapons and items in video games--are not taxable if those currencies exist solely within their lone environment. But other online, "virtual currencies" are a bit less "virtual" in that they can be traded offline and used to purchase real things or can even be converted to U.S. dollars using various third party trading systems.
The latter, the GAO report states, could "pose various tax compliance risks."
But there might be other worries in store for virtual currency users, things that are worse than merely paying taxes on the income, real or imagined, of virtual currencies. That worry is real-life crime.
In the same week in May that the GAO released its report, the Department of Homeland Security shut down a virtual currency trading service called Mt. Gox to prevent its trading in Bitcoins.
On May 14, DHS cut off links between the currency trading service Dwolla and Mt. Gox and put an end to the latter's trading in Bitcoins. DHS even froze Mt. Gox's assets. The reason DHS made this move is to prevent international drug dealers from doing business in Bitcoins; the online currency is often later turned into real-world currencies, including U.S. dollars.
Using a "confidential informant," DHS explained how Mt. Gox and Bitcoins are used for criminal purposes.
Mt. Gox acts as a digital currency exchange where customers open accounts and fund the respective accounts with fiat currency, which is then exchanged into crypto-currency by Mt. Gox; the crypto-currency is known as bitcoin. Fiat currency simply refers to any money that a government has declared to be legal tender. The exchange is bidirectional and allows customers to also exchange bitcoins back into fiat currency, and then withdraw those funds. The exchange of fiat currency and bitcoins incurs a floating rate fee charged by Mt. Gox and is determined by the customer’s aggregate amount of funds exchanged on a monthly basis.
For years, virtual currencies have been promoted as a new world order, currencies that are above the normal world of laws, taxes, and national borders. But it appears that with the IRS looking at ways to tax them and security agencies looking for ways to stop terrorists and drug dealers from profiting from them, that notion that virtual currencies are above the law is no longer as axiomatic as proponents have claimed.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/the-largest-tea-party-protest-since-2010-is-tomorrow/#ixzz2Waezq1K6
Conservative activists are planning to storm Capitol Hill on Wednesday for what they are predicting will be “the largest Tea
Party protest since 2010.”
Party protest since 2010.”
The protest — drawing tea partiers like TV host Glenn Beck and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — is in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s recent admission that it has been specifically targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
The gathering on the West Lawn of the Capitol is being called the “Audit the IRS” Rally.
the IRS” Rally.
“At noon tomorrow, we are going to tell the world about how the IRS tried to crush the Tea Party movement,” organizers with the Tea Party Patriots organization said in an email to supporters.
to supporters.
“Thousands of volunteers will rally in the largest demonstration of Tea Party support since 2010.”
Others expected to appear at the rally include Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are also on the schedule.
Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are also on the schedule.
A number of representatives from local tea party groups who claim to have been unfairly targeted by the IRS are also expected to partake in the rally.
to have been unfairly targeted by the IRS are also expected to partake in the rally.
Groups like the Tea Party Patriots, which is organizing Wednesday’s rally, frequently sponsored similar protests in 2010, when the tea party movement was at its height.
Those sorts of rallies are not nearly as frequent anymore. But organizers are betting they can draw a crowd.
“We have been coordinating buses to the very last minute, and the plans for our stage and massive sound system are all set. We need to make sure these Washington cronies can hear us!” the organizers said.
to the very last minute, and the plans for our stage and massive sound system are all set. We need to make sure these Washington cronies can hear us!” the organizers said.
Tags: IRS Audit Scandal, Tea party
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