IRS Official’s Admission Baffled Audience At Tax Panel

[DonViejo]

ERIC LACH MAY 14, 2013, 4:27 PM
The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section’s big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel’s last question.

“Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS’s review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations,” Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, a few minutes after Lerner finished giving prepared remarks. “I was just wondering if you could provide an update.”

The name of the panel was “News From The IRS And Treasury.” But few, if any, of those present could have anticipated the kind of news Lerner would make with her response to Roady’s question.

Lerner began by describing the increase in 501(c)(4) applications the IRS received between 2010 and 2012. IRS employees in Cincinnati, Lerner said, had reacted by centralizing the applications for efficiency and consistency, something the IRS did “whenever we see an uptick in a new kind of application or something we haven’t seen before.” But in this case, Lerner said, the centralization had not been carried out properly.

full article
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/lois_lerner_irs_scandal.php?ref=fpb

[dkf]

1. Holy crap...were these prepared remarks? Who set this up?

But back at the Grand Hyatt on Friday, Lerner’s words were met with surprise and bafflement. The fact that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration had a report on the issue just days from release was not yet widely known. Audience members couldn’t understand why Lerner had chosen that panel as the venue in which to make her admission. While Lerner’s remarks have since been referred to as a “slip” by lawmakers and media reports, several people in the audience on Friday said they saw Lerner refer to notes when answering the question, as if she’d prepared the response in advance. The whole thing was so strange, some even speculated that the question itself had been a plant.

“We all just sort of looked at each other and couldn’t quite understand,” Ellen Aprill, a professor at Loyola Law School who was in the audience, told TPM on Monday. “It seemed so odd that it was such a detailed response to the question rather than part of her prepared remarks.”

Paul Streckfus, the editor of EO Tax Journal, an online publication for exempt organization tax practitioners, told TPM he had been “dozing off” when Roady had asked the question, but had “jumped almost out of my seat” when he realized what Lerner was saying. (Streckfus recorded the panel and provided the transcript of Roady’s question to TPM.) Once Lerner had finished, Streckfus rushed up along with another reporter to question Lerner further, but she begged off.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/lois_lerner_irs_scandal.php?ref=fpb

[dkf]

3. Hmm the IRS set it up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022850374

[Jimdish25]

2. Lerner and Shulman

So Doug Shulman (Bush appointee) and Lois Lerner appointed as head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division during the Bush administration in 2006 are at the center of a "scandal" where the IRS was actually trying to do their jobs and totally screwing up without a clear plan or policy regarding audits. And Obama feeds them the scalp of a guy who had nothing to do with that policy.

So READY, FIRE, AIM! We know for sure that won't satisfy the blood lust of Congresspersons who's only job seems to be making sure that nobody does their jobs. We also know that the firing is an admission of sorts to any allegation the Republicans and the media choose to make.

The article reads like a smoking gun of a planted question but to what ends we don't know. It's way more than a coincidence.

[Cha]

4. Kick.. I'm still in the embryonic stage of understanding

this.

“At that point [after Roady asked Lerner the question], she should have said, ‘I understand the report’s coming out in a few days, as soon as it’s out I’ll be glad to respond to that question, but now is not the time,’” Streckfus said. “So I think she did make a terrible mistake. I think she would even agree that it was just a terrible mistake on her part. It’s like being a quarterback and throwing an interception. You think, ‘Man, I wish I could have that one back.’ And, unfortunately in her case, once it got out there, all hell broke loose.”

thanks DV