[PAULYPOKER]

IRS to pay $70 million in bonuses



The Internal Revenue Service, which is already struggling with a series of scandals, is in the process of handing out $70 million in bonuses to employees.

Despite an April directive from the White House budget office ordering agencies to halt discretionary bonuses due to automatic spending cuts, the IRS has announced it is legally obligated under a union contract to pay out $70 million in staff bonuses.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has said his office has information that the U.S. tax agency is currently negotiating with the National Treasury Employee Union to pay the staff bonuses.

“It [the IRS] appears to be making an extra effort to give the bonuses despite opportunities to renegotiate with the union and federal instruction to cease discretionary bonuses during sequestration,” said Grassley.

The IRS is already under fire for a string of scandals including wasteful spending, targeting certain groups for their political views, having its law enforcement agents trained with AR-15 rifles, and seeking state-of-the art spying tools for tax collection.

Last month, it emerged that the IRS inappropriately targeted certain conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status on various occasions over the past two years.

Groups with “tea party” or “patriot” which criticized the U.S. government and tried to educate the American public about the U.S. Constitution were singled out by the U.S. tax agency for close scrutiny.

In late May, Republican Congressman Jeff Duncan, who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, noticed that IRS agents were training with AR-15 rifles at a federal law enforcement facility.

“I think Americans raise eyebrows when you tell them that IRS agents are training with a type of weapon that has stand-off capability. It’s not like they’re carrying a sidearm and they knock on someone’s door and say, ‘You’re evading your taxes,” Duncan said.

Moreover, a report by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General earlier this month showed the embattled agency wasted $50 million on “inappropriate” conferences during a three-year period between 2010 and 2012.

The IRS also posted a procurement solicitation on June 6 for acquiring state-of-the art spying tools like “Covert Coffee tray(s) with Camera concealment” and surveillance equipment to be hidden in plants to bolster its tax collection “mission.”

ISH/ARA

[PAULYPOKER]

[Mr KLC]