The IRS scandal has claimed its first scalp. Steve Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has resigned at the request of the Treasury secretary, President Obama announced in a late-afternoon statement to the media. The agency was found to have inappropriately targeted conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status. “Americans are right to be angry about it,” Obama said of the misconduct. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior ... given the power that [the IRS] has and the reach that it has in all of our lives.” Obama also said he’d cooperate with Congress during its oversight review.

TPM:

"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS," Obama said at the White House. "Given the power that it has, and the reach that it has in all of our lives. And as I said earlier, it should not matter what political stripe you're from, the fact of the matter is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity."

Obama also said that his administration will implement new procedures to ensure the same kind of misconduct does not occur again, inviting lawmakers to assist in the effort.

"I've directed Secretary Lew to ensure the IRS begins implementing the [Inspector General's] recommendations right away," Obama said. "Third, we will work with congress as it performs its oversight role."

An internal Treasury Department report found that ineffective management at the agency allowed employees to inappropriately single out conservative non-profit groups for additional reviews during in the run up to the 2012 election, focusing on such key words as “Tea Party,” ”Patriots” or “9/12 Project” in their applications.

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House Republican leadership today responded to their session with President Obama in a press conference.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) condemned the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal on Wednesday, demanding that the administration hold someone responsible.

"The IRS admitted to targeting conservatives, even if the White House continues to be stuck on the word 'if,'" he told reporters at a weekly briefing. "My question isn't about who is going to resign. My question is who's going to jail over this scandal?"

Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday he had ordered the FBI to open a criminal probe in a growing scandal over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative political groups for extra tax scrutiny.

Speaker Boehner made no mention of jobs during the Republican press conference today, nor did any of the other GOP House "leaders."

By Kim Barker and Justin Elliott, ProPublica

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.

In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

On Friday, Lois Lerner, the head of the division on tax-exempt organizations, apologized to Tea Party and other conservative groups because the IRS' Cincinnati office had unfairly targeted them. Tea Party groups had complained in early 2012 that they were being sent overly intrusive questionnaires in response to their applications.

That scrutiny appears to have gone beyond Tea Party groups to applicants saying they wanted to educate the public to "make America a better place to live" or that criticized how the country was being run, according to a draft audit cited by many outlets. The full audit, by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, will reportedly be released this week. (ProPublica was not contacted by the inspector general's office.) (UPDATE May 14: The audit has been released.)  

Before the 2012 election, ProPublica devoted months to showing how dozens of social-welfare nonprofits had misled the IRS about their political activity on their applications and tax returns. Social-welfare nonprofits are allowed to spend money to influence elections, as long as their primary purpose is improving social welfare. Unlike super PACs and regular political action committees, they do not have to identify their donors.

In 2012, nonprofits that didn't have to report their donors poured an unprecedented $322 million into the election. Much of that money — 84 percent — came from conservative groups. 

As part of its reporting, ProPublica regularly requested applications from the IRS's Cincinnati office, which is responsible for reviewing applications from nonprofits.

Social welfare nonprofits are not required to apply to the IRS to operate. Many politically active new conservative groups apply anyway. Getting IRS approval can help with donations and help insulate groups from further scrutiny. Many politically active new liberal nonprofits have not applied.  

Applications become public only after the IRS approves a group's tax-exempt status.

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By Kim Barker, ProPublica

A former Illinois congressional candidate and a government watchdog organization have teamed up to sue the Internal Revenue Service, claiming the agency should bar dark money groups from funding political ads.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by David Gill, his campaign committee and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is the first to challenge how the IRS regulates political spending by social welfare nonprofits, campaign-finance experts say.

As ProPublica has reported, these nonprofits, often called dark money groups because they don't have to identify their donors, have increasingly become major players in politics since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in early 2010.

Gill, an emergency room doctor who has advocated for health-care reform, including a single-payer plan, was the Democratic candidate for the 13th district in Illinois last year. After a tight race, Gill ended up losing to the Republican candidate by 1,002 votes — a loss the lawsuit blames "largely, if not exclusively," on spending by the American Action Network, a social welfare nonprofit.

It's impossible to say for certain why Gill lost. He had lost three earlier races for a congressional seat.

But the American Action Network, launched in 2010 by former Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, played a role. It reported spending almost $1.5 million on three TV commercials and Internet ads opposing Gill, mainly in the weeks right before the election. That was more than any other outside group spent on the race, and more than Gill's principal campaign committee spent on the entire election, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Though Gill had never held public office, the American Action Network ads described him as "a mad scientist" who supported sending jobs to China, channeling money to the failed green-energy company Solyndra, and making a mess out of health care and Medicare.

Gill said he ran into people every day who said they weren't voting for him because of claims he would destroy Medicare.

"I think that certainly the money put forward — they saw that they could have an impact here," Gill said of the American Action Network. "They wanted to put their money where it could make a difference between victory and defeat."

Dan Conston, spokesman for the American Action Network, described CREW as a "left-wing front group" in an email. He said Gill was a "failed candidate with an extreme ideology, looking to blame anyone but himself for losing his fourth-straight congressional election."

Nonprofits like the American Action Network have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into political ads in the last two election cycles. Like super PACs, these groups can accept unlimited donations. But super PACs must identify their donors, allowing voters to see who is behind their messages.

The Gill lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, alleges the IRS failed to properly regulate the American Action Network, citing seemingly contradictory definitions the agency has applied to such groups for years.

The statute governing social welfare nonprofits says they should be operated "exclusively" for promoting social welfare. But the IRS paved the way for political spending by these groups by interpreting "exclusively" as meaning the groups had to only be "primarily" engaged in promoting the public good. Some groups have taken this to mean they can spend up to 49 percent of their money on election ads.

The lawsuit claims the IRS' interpretation of the law "is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law," and asks for an injunction prohibiting the agency from using it.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, blamed the IRS for sitting on its hands as social welfare nonprofits have been formed specifically to run negative ads paid for by anonymous donors.

"Now the IRS can explain its deplorable inaction in federal court," she said.

The IRS didn't respond to requests for comment Tuesday. It typically doesn't comment on issues related to individual taxpayers.

The American Action Network has been one of the more controversial dark money groups active in politics. Conston said the American Action Network's primary focus was on non-electoral activities and called the dispute over the group's election spending a "tired long-since settled argument."

In filings to the IRS, the group said it spent $25.7 million in its 2010 tax year. In separate filings to the Federal Election Commission, it reported spending about $19.4 million over the same period on political ads, or about 76 percent of the total expenditures reported to the IRS.

If the group stays on its current schedule, American Action Network won't file its taxes covering the 2012 election until May 2014.

By Kim Barker, ProPublica

In a confidential 2010 filing, Crossroads GPS — the dark money group that spent more than $70 million from anonymous donors on the 2012 election — told the Internal Revenue Service that its efforts would focus on public education, research and shaping legislation and policy.

The group's application for recognition as a social welfare nonprofit acknowledged that it would spend money to influence elections, but said "any such activity will be limited in amount, and will not constitute the organization's primary purpose."

Political insiders and campaign-finance watchdogs have long questioned how Crossroads, the brainchild of GOP strategist Karl Rove, had characterized its intentions to the IRS.

Now, for the first time, ProPublica has obtained the group's application for recognition of tax-exempt status, filed in September 2010. The IRS has not yet recognized Crossroads GPS as exempt, causing some tax experts to speculate that the agency is giving the application extra scrutiny. If Crossroads GPS is ultimately not recognized, it could be forced to reveal the identities of its donors.

The tax code allows groups like Crossroads to spend money on political campaigns — and to keep their donors private — as long as their primary purpose is enhancing social welfare.

Crossroads' breakdown of planned activities said it would focus half its efforts on "public education," 30 percent on "activity to influence legislation and policymaking" and 20 percent on "research," including sponsoring "in-depth policy research on significant issues."

This seems at odds with much of what the group has done since filing the application, experts said. Within two months of filing its application, Crossroads spent about $15.5 million on ads telling people to vote against Democrats or for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections.

"That statement of proposed activities does not seem to align with what they actually did, which was to raise and spend hundreds of millions to influence candidate elections," said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, who reviewed the group's application at ProPublica's request.

Officials with Crossroads GPS would not answer specific questions about the material in the application or whether the IRS had sent a response to it.

"As far as we know, the Crossroads application is still pending, in which case it seems that either you obtained whatever document you have illegally, or that it has been approved," Jonathan Collegio, the group's spokesman, said in an email.

The IRS sent Crossroads' application to ProPublica in response to a public-records request. The document sent to ProPublica didn't include an official IRS recognition letter, which is typically attached to applications of nonprofits that have been recognized. The IRS is only required to give out applications of groups recognized as tax-exempt.

In an email Thursday, an IRS spokeswoman said the agency had no record of an approved application for Crossroads GPS, meaning that the group's application was still in limbo.

"It has come to our attention that you are in receipt of application materials of organizations that have not been recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt," wrote the spokeswoman, Michelle Eldridge. She cited a law saying that publishing unauthorized returns or return information was a felony punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment of up to five years, or both. The IRS would not comment further on the Crossroads application.

"ProPublica believes that the information we are publishing is not barred by the statute cited by the IRS, and it is clear to us that there is a strong First Amendment interest in its publication," said Richard Tofel, ProPublica's general manager.

ProPublica has redacted parts of the application to omit Crossroads' financial information.

With its sister group, the super PAC American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS has helped remake how modern political campaigns are financed.

American Crossroads, which does identify its donors, spent almost $105 million on election ads in the 2012 cycle. For its part, Crossroads GPS poured more than $70 million into ads and phone calls urging voters to pick Republicans — outlays that were reported to the Federal Election Commission. It also announced spending an additional $50 million on ads critical of President Barack Obama that ran outside the FEC's reporting window.

Based on the extent of Crossroads GPS' campaign activities, Obama's re-election campaign asked the FEC in June to force it to register as a political action committee and disclose its donors. The FEC has yet to rule on the request.

Politically active social welfare nonprofits like Crossroads have proliferated since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January 2010 opened the door to unlimited political spending by corporations and unions.

Earlier this year, a ProPublica report showed that many of these groups exploit gaps in regulation between the IRS and the FEC, using their social welfare status as a way to shield donors' identities while spending millions on political campaigns. The IRS' definition of political activity is broader than the FEC's, yet our investigation showed many social welfare groups underreported political spending on their tax returns.

It's impossible to know precisely how Crossroads has directed its efforts, but the breakdown of expenses on its tax returns from June 2010 to December 2011 gives some indications.

During those 19 months, Crossroads spent a total of $64.7 million, of which $1.4 million — or just 2 percent — was identified as being spent on research. That compares with the 20 percent of effort Crossroads said it would devote to research in its application.

A tax return covering this year isn't due until November 2013.

The IRS rarely pursues criminal charges against nonprofits based on statements in their applications. It's more common for the agency to deny recognition or revoke a group's tax-exempt status.

In a letter to Congress in September, the IRS said it was engaged in "more than 70 ongoing examinations" of social welfare nonprofits. Earlier, in its work plan for the 2012 fiscal year, the agency said it was taking a hard look at social welfare nonprofits with "serious allegations of impermissible political intervention."

Campaign finance watchdog Fred Wertheimer, who runs Democracy 21 and has filed several complaints to the IRS about Crossroads, said the group's application for recognition showed why more aggressive enforcement is needed.

"When you read what they say on their application, there are a lot of words there. But I find them to be disingenuous and to have little to do with why Karl Rove founded this organization," Wertheimer said. "If you believe this is a social welfare organization, I have a rocket that can get you to the moon very quickly and at very little cost."

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By Kim Barker, ProPublica, and Rick Young and Emma Schwartz, Frontline Oct. 30, 2012

This story is being co-published with Frontline, which is also airing a documentary on the group tonight. Check your local listings.

New signs emerged Monday that a controversial nonprofit may have misled the Internal Revenue Service not only about its political activities but also about support from a purported donor.

Western Tradition Partnership, or WTP, sent the IRS a letter in 2008 asking the agency to expedite the group's request for recognition of its tax-exempt status. The letter said that without it, the group's principle donor, Jacob Jabs, would pull a planned grant of $300,000.

But Jabs, who runs Colorado's largest furniture retailer, said on Monday he had never pledged money to the group, and never even been in contact with them until press stories appeared naming him.

"I think they just grabbed my name out of a hat to forward their agenda," Jabs told us. "I know nothing about the group, never heard of them, never have heard of them until the last few days, and I did not, absolutely did not, commit $300,000 to start this company." (Jabs also spoke with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, again denying any connection to the group.)

Although operating at the state level, WTP has won national attention for its attempts to fight campaign-finance restrictions. It successfully sued to overturn Montana's ban on corporate spending in elections, extending the provisions of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to all states. It has also sued Montana investigators over the state's ruling two years ago that the group is a political committee and should have to report its donors.

Documents obtained by Frontline on WTP offer a rare look into the inner workings of dark money groups, tax-exempt organizations that can accept unlimited contributions and do not have to disclose their donors for political ads.

On Monday, we detailed how some of those documents pointed to WTP actively shaping the campaigns of candidates for state office in Montana. The documents, found in a meth house near Denver by a convicted felon in late 2010, indicate possible coordination between candidates and outside groups. Outside groups and candidates are not allowed to coordinate.

Social welfare nonprofits like WTP are allowed to engage in some political activity, but IRS regulations say they must have social welfare as their primary purpose. ProPublica has extensively reported on how some of these nonprofits, known as 501(c)(4)'s after their section of the tax code, appear to exploit gaps in enforcement between the Internal Revenue Service and election authorities so they don't have to disclose where they get their money.

As ProPublica and Frontline have previously reported, when WTP applied for recognition of its tax-exempt status, the group also told the IRS under penalty of perjury that it would not directly or indirectly attempt to influence elections. Yet even before its application, the group sponsored mailers that criticized politicians in the 2008 Republican primary.

The IRS approved WTP's tax-exempt status three days after it received the group's request for expedited review.

Jabs said he only first spoke with WTP earlier this month, after seeing reports that he was the primary donor. Jabs said he reached a WTP official, Athena Dalton, who signed the IRS letter citing him. According to Jabs, Dalton told him she was WTP's secretary and had been instructed to send the letter by two other WTP officials, Christian LeFer and Dan Reed.

"I did talk to Christian LeFer," Jabs said. "They basically admitted they used me to get their 501(c)(4) status." Jabs said he also contacted Reed, who did not call him back.

In an email responding to a ProPublica question about Jabs, LeFer wrote: "Your facts are wrong, I 'admitted' no such thing; that doesn't even sound plausible. Further, what significance this issue might hold escapes me. I don't discuss donors, and I can see that your story line does not need my help."

Reed did not respond to a phone call.

On Monday, LeFer also confirmed the documents found in a meth house were stolen from his wife's car and belonged to him and his wife, Allison. The documents included material from outside groups and candidates, and communications between LeFer and candidates. There were surveys of candidates by outside groups and drafts and final copies of mailers marked as being paid for by the campaigns.

LeFer, described as WTP's director of strategic programming in memos in 2009, said in an email that the boxes of documents were stolen in Colorado in June 2010.

"These stolen documents appear to be a mix of those from my consulting and volunteer work and from my wife's independently owned and operated mail and printing shop," wrote LeFer, whose wife runs a company called Direct Mail and Communications in Livingston, Mont. "Both my wife and I have scrupulously endeavored to avoid any possibility of illegal coordination.

"The stolen documents, which were in the process of being transferred to storage when the theft occurred, have been mingled to infer that the work of two separate people is in fact the work of one person and therefore improper. This is false." (Here is LeFer's full response.)

Candidates have confirmed that LeFer worked with Direct Mail. They have also said LeFer was an adviser on their campaigns.

There is also other evidence LeFer worked with the firm.

On Tuesday, a woman named Elizabeth Sheron said that when she briefly worked for Direct Mail in 2010, LeFer welcomed her to the company. She provided us a check from Direct Mail and an email from LeFer in which he asked her to elaborate on her abilities and experience. LeFer also wrote that he hoped to increase the membership of one of his social welfare nonprofits to 250,000 people in two years.

Sheron said she did work for Direct Mail, WTP and other related groups. "They kind of had you involved with every project…no matter who was paying you," she said. "I was paid by Direct Mail but I was doing stuff for other groups." Sheron worked there only briefly before quitting.

In an email, LeFer said he didn't think it was useful to try to recall "snippets of information from years back." He said if reporters sent "the entire file of materials you have and you want to discuss at a later time, please do so."

The documents from the meth house eventually landed in the office of Montana investigators, who couldn't do much with them because they couldn't definitively prove they were real, or how they ended up in a meth house.

On Monday, a lawyer for LeFer confirmed them by sending a letter to Montana authorities explaining that the car was stolen from a homeschooling conference in Denver. The lawyer said the documents were stolen property and "evidence regarding the criminal investigation of the car theft in Colorado." The lawyer also said the documents contained sensitive information, and demanded that the documents be turned over to LeFer.

Montana investigators have sealed access to the documents, saying that now that someone has asserted ownership, they are unable to further discuss or release them until a court rules on the matter.

Western Tradition Partnership is now known as American Tradition Partnership. So far this election season, the group has advocated for candidates in Montana's Republican primary, putting out a press release announcing that 12 of those candidates won. It also has launched a newspaper called the Montana Statesman, which claims to be the state's "largest & most trusted news source," to be the state's "only non-partisan newspaper" and to have been founded in 1889.

A second edition of the purported newspaper was mailed to voters in Montana last week. Like the first edition, the 12-page paper contains many articles attacking Steve Bullock, the Democratic candidate for governor who as attorney general fought the partnership's lawsuits against the state. One on the front page accused him of being soft on child molesters.

Other stories attacked the state auditor, a Supreme Court candidate and the secretary of state.

On its website, the group describes itself as a "no-compromise grassroots organization dedicated to fighting the radical environmentalist agenda."

In a statement responding to the story Monday by ProPublica and Frontline, American Tradition Partnership, or ATP, said it had not coordinated with candidates. "I have never met or spoken to virtually all the candidates on the ballot," wrote Donny Ferguson, the executive director of the partnership and the editor of the Montana Statesman, on the Statesman website.

Ferguson also said the law was always on the group's side, and that the nonprofit had always obeyed every applicable law. He denied that the group told people how to vote. "ATP does not, and never will, tell voters which candidates to vote for," he wrote. "ATP speaks on the issues, informing voters where candidates stand and of their public records."

The IRS defines political advertising much more broadly than election authorities, asking whether social welfare nonprofits directly — or indirectly — engaged in campaign activities.

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica

A dark money nonprofit group that has run more than $1 million in ads in the Ohio race for U.S. Senate told the IRS last year it did not plan to spend any money to influence elections when it applied for recognition of its tax-exempt status. 

ProPublica first reported on the group, the Government Integrity Fund, after information from television station political ad files became available online (see our Free the Files project), showing extensive spending by the Fund.

The group's filings with the IRS  illustrate how "social welfare" nonprofits, also known as 501(c)(4)s, are playing an aggressive role in this election, pouring tens of millions of dollars into races around the country, while taking advantage of the donor anonymity their tax status provides.

The Fund applied for IRS recognition last December and received the IRS' approval less than two months later.

Question 15 on the application asks, "Has the organization spent or does it plan to spend any money attempting to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of any person to any Federal, state, or local public office or to an office in a political organization?"

Much hinges on this: Under the tax code, social welfare nonprofits may not have political campaign activity as their primary purpose, though exactly what that means is a subject of much debate.

Fund chairman Tom Norris, who signed the Fund's application, checked the "No" box on Question 15.

In a statement to ProPublica, the Fund said that "legally, the concept of ‘influencing elections' has been narrowly defined" and that "throughout its existence, [the Fund] has regularly consulted with experienced tax counsel to ensure it is in full compliance with the federal tax laws." (See the full statement.) Norris, a Columbus lobbyist, did not respond to calls.

Ads paid for by the Fund, which ran through the summer, praised Republican Josh Mandel and attacked Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. One spot features Mandel telling a veterans group, "I think this campaign is all about the past versus the future." A voiceover chimes in: "Josh Mandel served our country with two tours in Iraq. Now he's fighting for taxpayers, fighting for our future."

There are several reasons groups may prefer answering "No" to Question 15. Those answering "Yes" are instructed to explain in detail and list the amounts to be spent, which can lead to scrutiny that slows down the IRS approval process, tax experts say.

"Checking yes is a yellow flag for the IRS, which likely would cause the IRS to refer the application to an agent for consideration and follow-up questions," said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, an expert in nonprofit tax law at the University of Notre Dame law school. "There could be donors saying, ‘I'm not comfortable giving to you until I know you are a 501(c)(4) and my identity is protected. So I want that IRS [approval] letter.'"

The Fund's IRS application did provide other clues about its intentions. In one section of the form, the Fund said its budget for 2011 was $78,000. It then projected a budget of $6.7 million for 2012, an election year, before going back down to $50,000 for 2013, a nonelection year.

Mayer said the IRS typically wouldn't scrutinize a group's spending until it files a tax return — and in the case of the Fund, the return covering 2012 could be filed as late as November 2013. If the IRS found that the Fund was improperly taking advantage of its status as a social welfare group, it could impose a fine and make the group operate as a political organization that does have to report donors.

The group's application for IRS recognition was signed under penalty of perjury, but Mayer said it was rare for the agency to pursue charges against an applicant for lying.

The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.

The Fund's application for tax-exempt status also sheds a bit more light on who is running the group. It names four men as board members, including Norris. Another of the board members, Jeffrey L. Dean, referred questions to Jonathan Petrea, who was campaign manager and district director for Mandel when he ran for the state legislature.

Petrea told ProPublica he had no official role in the Fund, but helped Norris find potential board members.

"I was just doing a guy a favor by putting him in touch with people who might be interested," Petrea said.

Norris and the Mandel campaign did not respond to questions about Petrea's relationship to the Fund or the candidate.

Petrea was also previously Ohio grassroots director for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative 501(c)(4) backed by the Koch brothers, and has recently done work for Energy Citizens, a group advocating oil and gas development. 

The Fund's ads have been off the air since Sept. 6, according to the Brown campaign. (After that date, certain types of ad spending had to be reported to the Federal Election Commission.)

The group's attorney, William Todd, said he doesn't know about its plans "for future education efforts."

David Cay Johnston at Reuters reports:

IRS data suggests that, globally, U.S. nonfinancial companies hold at least three times more cash and other liquid assets than the Federal Reserve reports, idle money that could be creating jobs, funding dividends or even paying a stiff federal penalty tax for hoarding corporate cash.

The Fed's latest Flow of Funds report showed that U.S. nonfinancial companies held $1.7 trillion in liquid assets at the end of March. But newly released IRS figures show that in 2009 these companies held $4.8 trillion in liquid assets, which equals $5.1 trillion in today's dollars, triple the Fed figure.
...
This cash pool came to $16,700 for every man, woman and child in the United States, a 53 percent real increase from 2004, my calculations from IRS data show.

You don't have to sit idle and frustrated pondering how many jobs these companies could be creating if they weren't just hoarding all this cash. As Johnston explains here:

Want to motivate companies to put some of those trillions of dollars of idle cash to work creating jobs, paying dividends or sharing the burden of taxes? Call 1-202-224-3121 and tell your senator or representative you want Section 531 vigorously enforced - now - and the offshore loophole closed immediately.

Hopefully we'll hear these statistics from an annual IRS report cited frequently during the 2012 campaign season. These shocking numbers emphasize the vast divide of income disparity between the 1 percent and the 99% of Americans:

In addition to the six who paid no tax, another 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes. That’s the same federal tax rate as a single worker who made $61,500 in 2009.

Overall, the top 400 paid an average income tax rate of 19.9 percent, the same rate paid by a single worker who made $110,000 in 2009. The top 400 earned five times that much every day.
...

Let’s return for a moment to the single worker who made $61,500 in 2009 and paid 15 percent of his salary in federal income taxes. The top 400 made more every three hours than he did in a year, and yet many of them paid the same or a lower tax rate, according to the data in the report.

Why would anyone vote for a candidate who would continue to favor only a very small portion of Americans? Surely there are Republicans out there who fall into this income bracket, and they can't all be sadomasochists... can they?

[Via The National Memo]

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Wall Street bankers and other financial and corporate "fat cats" are beginning to feel picked on and lonely, and they're not going to take it anymore. However, they may be hanging themselves with their own quotes that shall live forever in infamy.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the "highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks," joined hedge fund manager John Paulson, and Home Depot Inc. co-founder Bernard Marcus, and other sad and lonely billionaires in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves - the richest 1 percent of the population - targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the nation.

If these guys aren't feeling the love now, just wait until what they're saying in their pity-the-poor-billionaires public relations blitz reaches the majority of the 99 percent. The billionaires are letting go with their repressed inner selves, and if you thought this was a cold, soulless group before they wanted you to like them, just wait until you listen to the video and read this evil crap.

Bloomberg:

If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website. He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.

"Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”

...

Asked if he were willing to pay more taxes in a Nov. 30 interview with Bloomberg Television, Blackstone Group LP (BX) CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax.

“You have to have skin in the game,” said Schwarzman, 64. “I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.”

...

Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of payroll processer Paychex Inc. (PAYX) and a former New York gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview this month that while there are examples of excess, it’s “ridiculous” to blame everyone who is rich.

“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.

...

[Leon] Cooperman, 68, [Omega Advisors Inc. chairman and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s money-management unit.] said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.

“You’ll get more out of me,” the billionaire said, “if you treat me with respect.”

Be sure to read Max Abelson's entire report at Bloomberg here.