Did former President Trump unleash the IRS on political foes Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe? The question is back in the news. Trump’s former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, says Trump demanded the FBI Commissioners be punished with audits. Read more>>
The IRS’s enforcement priorities often appear – well – insane. Consider the cases of two current clients: one client owes the IRS $900,000, and the IRS thinks the other client owes $6,000 from a IRA distribution he took the year of the Woolsey Fire. We’re disputing the $6,000: Congress relaxed the rules for people in the disaster zone. Who’s the IRS going after? My client who had to evacuate from his house with the $9,000 tax bill. Huh? Seriously? Read more>>
I was a tax attorney at the IRS for a decade. So you know I’ve been all over the fascinating story that the IRS recently subjected former FBI Directors James Comey and Andrew McCabe to its most invasive NRP audit. Comey and McCabe were famously fired and publicly abused by former President Trump. Suspicious minds now wonder whether IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, a Trump appointee, ordered the audits on these two men as a form of political retribution. Very unlikely. Here’s why.Read more>>
Readers of my blog know I frequently berate Congress for having cut the IRS’ budget while dramatically increasing its workload in the past decade. But here’s the politically conservative Wall Street Journal, letting us know how the IRS’s woes are encouraging tax evasion. Read more »
The IRS’s 2021 responsiveness has been rightfully panned . Due to budget constraints, Covid work restrictions for IRS employees, and a huge work increase from administering much of the Economic Recovery Read more »
I enthusiastically applaud President Biden’s proposal to increase the IRS’s budget by $1.2 billion, or more than 10 percent over this year’s budget. In fact, call me a huge cheerleader for this proposal
I saw this article originally in the Wall Street Journal, front page. But, I’m posting from the New York Times, because it’s not behind a paywall. $2 billion in hidden income? C’mon Robert Brockman – Read more »
Recipients of my September Newsletter know it featured me running for elected office on a mock platform of fully funding the IRS. This was the most recent of my many rants against Read more »
I don’t like offers in compromise as a way to get rid of tax debt. The process is cumbersome, expensive, and arbitrary. There are better ways to deal with tax Read more »
If it even brushes against California, the state government wants to tax it… Income earned from CA-based clients by Out-of-State Residents One of my clients is a lawyer but he moved Read more »
