Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”

[Joe Cooper]

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue
Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit
auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s
targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they
only operate on directives from headquarters:

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main
Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose
work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially
when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan
villainy.

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis
as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are
doing what we are supposed to do. .?.?. That’s why there are so many
people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t
have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on
them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear
of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and
without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for
consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a
similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the
review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer
who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

This pretty plainly contradicts the story coming out of the IRS that
rogue agents in Cincinnati were responsible:

News of (acting IRS commissioner Steve) Miller’s resignation
followed revelations that the IRS has identified two “rogue” employees in
the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the
“overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-
exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.

Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according
to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional
investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem
with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not
limited to these two employees.

In related news, I also noted how the Post’s story on the Cincinnati
office also appears to contradict what Miller told Congress this week
about how many auditors the IRS has covering nonprofit groups. Miller
said the figure was between 140-200, but the Post story puts the figure
at 900. The Post doesn’t source the figure, but presumably that also came
from people the reporters talked with in Cincinnati.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/anonymous-cincinnati-irs-official-
everything-comes-from-the-top./article/2530001

BUSTED!


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Leftists think and act like protofascists. Control is the key. And
control through fear, threat of force, and rhetorical intimidation
is the modus operandi. (Ben Shapro, "Bullies")