President Barack Obama proposed increasing the budget for the Internal Revenue Service by 9.4 percent to hire more than 5,000 new employees, most of whom would pursue tax cheats. The president’s fiscal 2012 budget released today sets funding for the tax-collection agency at $13.3 billion, an increase of $1.1 billion from 2010, the last time a full appropriation was made for the IRS. Almost half of the increase, or $460 million, would support the agency’s tax-enforcement programs. Under the plan, the IRS would focus on fighting tax evasion through the use of offshore accounts and cheating by corporate and high-wealth taxpayers. It also would seek out fraudulent tax preparers. [Bloomberg]
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Rest Easy: The IRS Is Preparing for IFRS
For the first times since we started paying attention, the TIGTA is simply putting everyone on notice that the IRS is on top of this IFRS thing. No “You suck at this IRS” or “Here’s a list of things you should considering doing if you are interested in not sucking any more, IRS.” Simply, “Here’s what they’re doing. Have a nice day.”
The IRS began developing plans for strategic and operational activities related to the adoption of the IFRS in 2009.
TIGTA found that the IRS: is training employees about IFRS concepts and potential issues; working with the tax preparer community to identify and outline IFRS implementation concerns; and developing procedures to address issues related to IFRS conversion efforts.
“The IRS is appropriately laying the groundwork for its increased oversight of international taxation by gaining an understanding of the International Financial Reporting Standards,” said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
TIGTA did not make any recommendations in this audit and the IRS did not provide any comments on a draft of the report.
Doesn’t quite feel right, does it?
Religious Freedom Hanging By a Thread at the IRS?
Okay maybe that’s a stretch but we’re guessing, what with all the rebellious employees, that the IRS is a tough place to work. Because of this high stress environment, normally rational people may jump to conclusions about otherwise harmless religious symbols.
A judge recently dismissed most of the legal claims of a former IRS revenue agent that wore a kirpan to work.
Continued, after the jump
Web CPA:
The revenue agent, Kawaljeet Kaur Tagore, sued the IRS after she was fired in July 2006 for wearing a “kirpan” to the IRS office in Houston…The blunt knife is traditionally worn in a curved sheath and is supposed to act as a reminder of a Sikh’s duty to protect the weak and promote justice for all. Tagore’s supervisor objected to the dagger, even though she claimed it never set off the metal detector in her building, and she was told to work from home.
How can you not get behind protecting the weak and justice for all? Still, Tagore was fired after refusing to wear a knife with a shorter, 2.5 inch, blade and returning with the 3 inch knife even though, as the original story reports, she had sharper items in her office, including her scissors.
Tagore filed suit earlier this year:
claiming that the government’s conduct violated both the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The defendants included the IRS, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and several of Tagore’s supervisors.
Bad news is that the judge threw out the some of the Title VII claims but good news is that the one against T. Geith still remains. We’ll continue to follow this story if new developments happen to drop on another painfully slow news day.
IRS Dagger Carrier’s Claims Partly Dismissed [Web CPA Debits & Credits]
Religious Groups Think New Tax On Churches Is Blasphemous
Religious groups are starting to catch wind of a new tax quietly imposed by Republicans […]