IRS Loses Lawyers
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Law, MoneySo why should you care?
The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the I.R.S. who oppose them.
The Bush administration has passed measures that reduce the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax � which opponents refer to as the “death tax� � but has failed in its efforts to eliminate the tax entirely. Mr. Brown said in a telephone interview Friday that he had ordered the staff cuts because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under President Bush’s legislation.
I’m sorry, but come on…could this administration be any more transparent?
But six I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a “back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.�
Jeezus…
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Law, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 24th, 2006 at 9:18 am
It gets much worse than you think. Not only did the IRS lawyers get shit-canned from their blood-sucking employer — now who do you think they’ll go to work for!! Legal Aid doesn’t have much use for them. They’ll go to work protecting the very people they were in charge of auditing/prosecuting. Its a double whammy.
I’m weeping uncontrolably.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Why wouldn’t the Bush administration push to achieve its agenda. Mr .Bush tries to make himself out to be a good old Texas boy, when he is really a Connecticut robber baron’s progeny. Bush, Harriman, Walker, Bundy…..check who these people are what their backgrounds contain……add the Yale Skull and Bones crew, and who does he really represent….definitely not middle class, working Americans…….sadly, neither do the Democrats….
If we want to get a voice in our government again, every middle class American should go to the polls and vote out every incumbent in Congress. Yes, we would lose some good people, but Washington would get the message more clearly than any other way……..an inexperieced Congress might make some mistakes, but they might be honest mistakes, instead of bought mistakes.
Somewhere I read 18 billionaires were financing the entire lobby movement to oust the Estate tax, and that is probably true, since most ordinary fortunes don’t hit within it once they are divided…..
July 24th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
That’s true. Here’s the link.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2182
July 24th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c107:5:./temp/~c107xOOS7c:e106409:
Here are the actual exemptions of the Death Tax passed in 2001. You hardly have to be a billionaire to want the Death Tax gone.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Broken link DP.
Please try again.
July 25th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/egtrra_law.pdf
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Estate_Tax
See if that works. The relevant part is Title V of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (or 26 USC 2001) which increases the exemptions and decreases the marginal tax rate on estates. It doesn’t suprise me, nor does it piss me off that billionaires are “behind” the effort — they have the most to lose. (And of course, I’m working under the premises that what is theirs is theirs and not simply lent to them by a benevolent government). BUT that is a much different thing than to say than “only billionaires care about this and only billionaires will be effected” by a ridding ourselves of the Death Tax, which I felt was the implicit argument in that comment. In fact many families are effected and the Death Tax is worst kind of income redistribution in that it cuts away at one of the core reasons people accumulate wealth (to provide for their families) and discourages savings.