In a recent congressional report released by the House Judiciary Committee, it shows IRS agents using fake names and types of harassment when dealing with the American taxpayers.
The House Judiciary Committee has been investigating the Internal Revenue Service conducting its lawfully protected and rather encouraged duty of oversight and has found alarming instances of the IRS using intimidation tactics and potentially law-breaking activities against American’s working class citizens. The committee released a 22 page report with numerous disturbing examples of agents abusing their powers.
The Washington Times reported an egregious example in which “The House Judiciary Committee documented a case in Ohio where an IRS agent showed up at a taxpayer’s home unannounced, lied about his name and the reason for his visit, refused to leave when told to do so by the woman’s lawyer, threatened to freeze the taxpayer’s assets and then filed a complaint against the police when they responded.”
The police were convinced that this man was not from the IRS and rather an imposter looking to scam American citizens. Police were only able to confirm his identity after contacting the IRS inspector general where they confirmed he was “a real agent using a fake name, ‘Agent Bill Haus.” What makes matters worse is the IRS confirmed that the person being targeted by the agent didn’t even owe any taxes!
According to a major of the Marion Police Department, he “found this entire situation odd. She is truly in fear of this man. What is more concerning, she had contacted the IRS, verified she has a zero balance and she indicates that the person she spoke with on the phone has no idea why an agent would be coming to her home.”
The “weaponization” of the IRS is real and includes many more horrible examples according to the report released by the House Judiciary Committee. Another example included a visit from an IRS agent to journalist Matt Taibbi who testified before Congress.
“The Republican investigation also revealed that the IRS was so eager to target Mr. Taibbi that it opened its investigation on Christmas Eve, which was also a Saturday, just three weeks after he broke his first story about what has come to be known as the ‘Twitter Files.” Taibbi also owed absolutely nothing to the IRS and was actually owed a refund.
According to The Washington Times:
In the Ohio case, the agent first claimed he was checking up on an estate of a deceased person for which the woman was the fiduciary and said she owed a substantial amount of money. The taxpayer showed that the taxes had been paid, and the agent then said he was actually there about delinquent returns.
The committee report said those stories should be concerning given the tens of billions of dollars Democrats in Congress pumped into the IRS in last year’s budget-climate bill.
“When the IRS visited my home, Jim Jordan actually did something about it,” Taibbi said regarding the House Chairman.
“No American should fall victim to deception from their own government to threaten and pressure them into submission,” the report said. “The details that the committee and select subcommittee gathered about IRS abuses are shocking examples of the federal government’s weaponization.”
After the GOP-lead investigation, the IRS has updated their policy. The report stated, “The Committee’s and Select Subcommittee’s oversight revealed, and led to the swift end of, the IRS’s weaponization of unannounced field visits to harass, intimidate, and target taxpayers. Taxpayers can now rest assured the IRS will not come knocking without providing prior notice — something that should have been the IRS’s practice all along.”
