This upcoming tax season entails some unpleasant surprises for United States citizens who either live in Israel or who hold bank accounts there. Filing requirements for these Americans have become more rigorous and the odds of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service are higher than they’ve ever been. In fact, tax accountants working in…
Just in time for the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, the U.S. Census Bureau has published what we might call a 2013 update of America’s own Harvest of Shame: a comprehensive annual report on the state of income, poverty and health insurance in the United States. To be fair, it’s not all bad news. For…
Of all the things we’ve learned about the Internal Revenue Service these past few weeks, the most amazing item is this: The IRS has a highly attenuated sense for the proper place for God in our lives. Just listen in on a telephone conversation from 2012: An IRS agent named Sherry Wan is telling the…
As the Internal Revenue Service reels from revelations that it targeted Tea Party groups’ tax-exempt applications for extra scrutiny, Jewish groups from the left and right are seeking to draw attention to a less noticed reality they say they face: Groups with ties to Israel seem to be drawing extra IRS scrutiny, too. Several Jewish…
A top official at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Thursday acknowledged that it was “embarrassing” how much the tax agency spent on training videos, including a Star Trek spoof, and other lavish expenses during a 2010 conference in California. Faris Fink, commissioner of the agency’s small business and self-employed division, told lawmakers the videos,…
The Internal Revenue Service reinstated the tax-exempt status of the Zionist Organization of America. “The work of the ZOA has never been altered or diminished one iota during this period,” ZOA President Morton Klein said in a statement Monday announcing the May 15 IRS decision. “Our campus work; our Title VI efforts; our Capitol Hill…
Besides throwing the Obama administration off its stride, the three scandals roiling Washington and the 24-hour cable news channels have one thing in common: They’re shrinking steadily as more information becomes available. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein ably deconstructs them in his Wonkblog: the IRS-Tea Party scandal involves a group of employees in the IRS…
In case you missed it, last night Jon Stewart took on the IRS-Tea Party and Justice Department-spying-on-reporters scandals and, as they say, nailed it. In an inspired burst of hilarious, impassioned (and profanity-laden) outrage, he summed up exactly why the reports of a Nixonian-sounding IRS witch-hunt against right-wing and Tea Party groups are, beyond their…
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