IRS Gave White House Thousands of Confidential Taxpayer Documents, Lawsuit Says
A legal advocacy firm has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department's inspector general, saying that the IRS gave thousands of confidential tax documents to the White House for review.
In its lawsuit, the Cause of Action group has exposed a pipeline of communication between the Treasury Department and the White House, according to Daily Caller. The documents likely include conservative and Tea Party groups associated with the IRS scandal.
"[T]he Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed Cause of Action that there exist nearly 2,500 potentially responsive documents relating to investigations of improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House," the group noted.
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The latest documentation followed the IRS' targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations for tax-exempt status violations. Lois G. Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, told reporters earlier that several organizations carrying the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their exemption applications were singled out by IRS agents for additional reviews between 2010 and 2012. One of the targeted groups in a 2012 lawsuit had sought to overturn Obamacare's contraceptive mandate.
"This disclosure, coming only after Cause of Action sued TIGTA over its refusal to acknowledge whether such investigations took place, and after the court ordered TIGTA to reveal whether or not documents existed, signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers' personal information," Examiner quoted Cause of Action as saying in a statement.
Numerous conservative political groups have accused the IRS of stalling their tax-exempt applications for political reasons. When a political action group does not receive tax-exempt status, potential donors cannot be guaranteed that their donations will be eligible for tax write-offs.
The IRS' stalling of the applications has cost some groups thousands in donations and grants, while other groups have not been able to survive. A communications director for a Texas-based conservative group told The Christian Post earlier that the IRS's stalling cost his group $80,000 in donations and grants.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who was appointed as the next chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, has said he will focus on the IRS scandal.
According to Fox News, Chaffetz "vowed" to make the probe into the IRS's practice of stalling 501(c) tax-exempt applications of conservative and religious political action groups the "centerpiece of his chairmanship."
In the spring, Chaffetz called for an independent special prosecutor when the IRS announced that emails from Lerner had been lost in a 2011 hard drive and no backup copies were made to turn over for review.
