Conservative Groups' Lawsuits Against IRS Dismissed

A federal judge has dismissed a pair of lawsuits against the Internal Revenue Service by over 40 conservative groups over the IRS’s handling of their applications for tax-exempt status, according to Michael Cohn in Accounting Today.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court in Washington pointed out in his ruling Thursday that the IRS had changed the way it reviewed the tax-exempt applications and had approved most of the groups, and that federal courts do not allow financial claims against individual defendants in the IRS for constitutional violations.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of conservative groups such as True the Vote and Linchpins of Liberty by the American Center for Law and Justice.

The IRS has come under fire from conservative groups since last year for using terms such as “Tea Party” and “Patriot” to review applications for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)4 of the Tax Code. The controversy led to the ouster of the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, Lois Lerner, along with other IRS officials.

The head of at least one conservative organization was dismayed by the dismissal of the lawsuits. “This ruling is offensive to every citizen who believes in equal treatment under the law,” said FreedomWorks executive vice president Adam Brandon in a statement. “It doesn't matter when the IRS bullied conservative groups or if they stopped, the point is that it was done, and the IRS has to be held accountable. Today's decision was the legalization of federal bullying and unchecked discretionary authority, so long as agencies can play the waiting game long enough to correct their misdeeds. The fact that it occurred in the first place was appalling, but the fact that it was excused by the courts was disgraceful."

If you - or someone you know - is considering a filing for tax-exempt status, contact Neikirk, Mahoney & Smith. Neikirk, Mahoney & Smith's tax experts can help you streamline the process and maximize the chances for a prompt approval from the Internal Revenue Service.

Lerner Loses Emails

Disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner and a number of her colleagues have lost their emails. That's right. The emails that congress had subpoenaed some 18 months ago are now mysteriously missing.
Here's what the media has to say about the subject:

Fox News

CNN 
Republican lawmakers are slamming the Internal Revenue Service, with one calling for an immediate investigation, after the agency notified Congress Friday that it was unable to recover former official Lois Lerner’s e-mails from January 2009 to April 2011 because of a computer crash.

The agency made the disclosure in a letter sent to Congressional investigators Friday afternoon, according a statement from Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-Louisiana. Read More

Courier-Journal
Nada thing.

Wall Street Journal
From a June 16 letter sent by Cleta Mitchell, attorney for True the Vote, to the Justice Department. TTV sued the IRS over alleged harassment in 2013:

Late Friday, the IRS apparently advised the Ways & Means Committee that the IRS has "lost" Lois Lerner's hard drive which includes thousands of Defendant Lerner's e-mail records. However, several statutes and regulations require that the records be accessible by the Committees, and, in turn, must be preserved and made available to TTV [True the Vote] in the event of discovery in the pending litigation. . . . We are deeply troubled by this news and . . . seek your consent to immediately allow a computer forensics expert selected by TTV to examine the computer(s) that is or are purportedly the source of Ms. Lerner's "lost" emails, including cloning the hard drives, and to attempt to restore what was supposedly "lost," and to seek to restore any and all "lost" evidence pertinent to this litigation. Read More

New York Times
WASHINGTON — Six additional Internal Revenue Service workers lost emails sought by congressional investigators when their computers crashed, investigators announced Tuesday, escalating Republican suspicions that the employees may have been trying to cover up political targeting of Tea Party organizations.

The revelation follows the news last week that Lois Lerner, the former chief of the I.R.S. division that grants tax-exempt status to organizations, had also lost two years’ worth of files when her computer crashed in mid-2011. Together, the growing trail of disappearing records has heightened Republican concerns that the tax agency conducted politically motivated reviews. Read More

CBS News
The Internal Revenue Service says it has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy.

The IRS told congressional investigators Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status.

The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups. Read More

NBC News
Republican lawmakers called for a new probe of the Internal Revenue Service on Friday after it told congressional investigators that it had lost more than two years of emails from the central figure in a yearlong inquiry into improper IRS reviews of Tea Party tax documents.

House Republicans have already voted to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the special targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Lerner was placed on administrative leave from her position as head of the agency's section on tax-exempt organizations in May 2013, after she admitted that the IRS gave special attention to applications for tax-exempt status that included words like "Tea Party" and "patriot." She retired in September. Read More

ABC News
The Internal Revenue Service has lost more emails connected to the tea party investigation, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

The IRS said last Friday it had lost an untold number of emails when Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011. Lerner used to head the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status.

On Tuesday, two key lawmakers said the IRS has also lost emails from six additional IRS workers whose computers crashed. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner's boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller.

Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status. Documents have shown some liberal groups were also flagged.

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee interviewed IRS technicians Monday. The technicians said they first realized that Lerner's emails were lost in February or March — months before they informed congressional investigators, said a statement by two top Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp of Michigan and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany of Louisiana. Read More

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