Rep. Joe Pitts: The IRS is out of control

By Congressman Joe Pitts
Guest columnist

The Washington Post recently told the story of how Mary Grice's tax refund was claimed for an old debt. One that she apparently incurred when she was just 4 years old.

When she wasn't even in elementary schools yet, Mary's father passed away and her family received Social Security survivor's benefits along with her mother and the rest of her siblings. At some point, Social Security figured out that they had overpaid someone in the Grice family. They didn't know who, but they determined that Mary would be the one to pay. The government wants $2,996 dollars from Mary or one of her younger siblings.

When the Washington Post tried to find out why the IRS and the government was trying to claim these old debts, the finger-pointing started but no one ever claimed responsibility. Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy, demanded that the IRS and Treasury explain why Mary and many other taxpayers suddenly find themselves having to pay decades old debts to the government.

They shouldn't hold their breath while waiting for a straight answer. In recent years, we've seen a number of demonstrations of just how powerful the IRS can be and just how unaccountable IRS leaders are to the American people.

Perhaps the clearest breach of ethics and likely breach of the law has been the targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups that were seeking tax exempt status. Lois Lerner, the former head of the tax exempt unit, has plead the Fifth in two separate hearings of the House Oversight and Investigations Committee and has been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Now that the Ways and Means Committee has recommended that Lerner be held accountable for crimes, we understand a little more why she resorted to pleading her Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

The IRS is not supposed to engage in political actions. In the 1970s, when President Nixon tried to use the agency to target his political enemies, Commissioner John Walters refused to do so. He took no action when handed a list of Nixon's enemies and eventually gave it to Congressional investigators when it was requested.

Lerner's actions stand in stark contrast. After the Supreme Court struck down limits on campaign speech on First Amendment grounds, President Obama publicly attacked the decision. His allies in Congress wrote letters to the IRS urging investigations of conservative groups. Liberal interest groups and media outfits echoed the calls of the President and Democratic Senators.

Instead of following the example of Walters and refusing to engage in politics, Lerner interfered in the work of the Cincinnati office in charge of approving tax exempt status and worked to deny an exemption to a top conservative group, Crossroads GPS.

As the Treasury Inspector General began to investigate why conservative applications were being held up, Lerner prepared a cover story. Even with the IG actively investigating, Lerner kept meeting with liberal pressure groups and kept pushing for Crossroads to be audited. She made inquiries that were against IRS regulations and that may have broken the law.

When her actions started to come to light last May, Lerner then blamed lower level IRS agents in Cincinnati even though she had been orchestrating the targeting of conservative groups for years.
It's now up to the Justice Department to bring charges against Lerner. Again, don't hold your breath. Lerner was doing exactly what the President and his allies wanted, try to shut down their political opponents.

It seems unlikely that Attorney General Holder will try to hold anyone at IRS accountable for the targeting of conservative groups. Just as no one will probably be held accountable for trying to make Mary Grice pay thousands of dollars for payments made under her dead father's Social Security number.

With a complex tax code spanning thousands of pages and more than 90,000 employees, it's nearly impossible to hold anyone at IRS accountable when taxpayers get abused. We need potent tax reform that every American can understand. Only a simpler, fairer tax code can reduce the IRS power over our lives.

Rep. Joe Pitts is a Republican who represents Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District in parts of Berks, Chester and Lancaster counties.