IRS specifically wanted to reveal mistakes at lawyer meeting [View all]

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On Monday, an agency statement said the IRS specifically wanted to reveal the information in that forum because it knew a report from the IRS Inspector General was about to be released.

"The ABA Tax Section conference was an important meeting for a key part of the Exempt Organization community" and it was "important" for members to "hear first-hand that we made mistakes in handling the process."


The agency had three press officers on hand to field questions from a handful of reporters who were present.

The question itself came from a long-time professional colleague of Lerner's, Celia Roady, a Washington tax lawyer at the firm of Morgan Lewis who served on the agency's Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities for a two year term starting in 2010 and has attended numerous professional conferences with Lerner.

In a brief telephone interview Monday, Roady said she was "as stunned as anybody to get a response" to her question.

But she declined to comment when asked how it was she happened to ask the question in the first place, referring Reuters to the IRS, which also declined to elaborate.

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-tax-irs-mistakesbre94d15g-20130514,0,5265698.story