Confusion reigned in tea party probes Liberal groups also looked at
During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager.
A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the tea party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections. Targeting key words
The specialists, hunched over laptops on the office’s fourth floor, rarely discussed politics, one former supervisor said. Low-level employees in what many in the IRS consider a backwater, they processed thousands of applications a year, mostly from charities such as private schools or Not all conservative groups that got special scrutiny from the IRS received follow-up requests for additional information. But some liberal groups did: Progress Texas, part of a national network of liberal advocacy groups, received a follow-up questionnaire from the IRS in February 2012, similar to the ones many tea party groups received, containing 21 questions. It took 479 days for Progress Texas to be approved, officials there told the New York Times. hospitals.
For months, the tea party cases sat on the desk of a lone specialist, who used “politicalsounding” criteria — words like “patriots,” “we the people” — as a way to search efficiently through the flood of applications for groups that might not quality for exemptions, according to the IRS inspector general. “Triage,” the agency’s acting chief described it.
As a grim-faced President Barack Obama denounced “inexcusable” actions of the IRS last week and lawmakers of both parties lined up in Washington on Friday to accuse it of an array of misconduct, everything seemed so clear: the nation’s tax agency had deliberately targeted conservative activists, violating the public trust — and perhaps the law. Muddled outpost
While there are still many gaps in the story of how the IRS scandal happened, interviews with current and former employees and with lawyers who dealt with them, along with a review of IRS documents, paint a more muddled picture of an understaffed Cincinnati outpost.
Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers, stalled by miscommunication with IRS lawyers and executives in Washington, and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with tea party in its name. But their review went beyond conservative groups: more than 400 organizations came under scrutiny, including at least two dozen liberal-leaning ones and some that were seemingly apolitical.
Who gets the blame and how far it goes are questions consuming Washington. Two top IRS officials have resigned, including the acting commissioner, Steven Miller.
“I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection,” Miller testified before a House committee Friday.