A review of the Internal Revenue Service’s compliance with the Freedom of Information Act found the agency intentionally withheld or failed to “adequately search” for requested information in hundreds of cases.
In others, the IRS released more than it was authorized, dispensing “sensitive taxpayer information,” including individuals’ bank records.
The number of FOIA requests that had piled up in the agency’s backlog jumped 84 percent at the end of fiscal year 2013, the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration found in a report made public Wednesday. As of June 2014, the agency’s backlog of FOIA requests had grown by an additional 16 percent.
TIGTA attributed the spike in backlogged information requests to the “influx of exempt organization requests starting in June 2013.” It was learned in May 2013 that the IRS had targeted and harassed hundreds of Tea Party and conservative nonprofit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns, sparking a national scandal that culminated in congressional and criminal investigations.
The IRS concealed information it should have released in response to an estimated 336 requests in 2013, according to the report.
Despite its findings, TIGTA did not issue any recommendations. The watchdog instead suggested IRS officials implement the recommendations laid out in last year’s review before addressing its latest findings.
On Sept. 17, the non-partisan government watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a motion in its ongoing FOIA lawsuit against the IRS for documents related to the recovery of records the agency claims have been “lost and/or destroyed” since news of the conservative targeting scandal broke.
Judicial Watch claims the IRS has filed seven declarations omitting information it was required to release since the group first filed its FOIA requests in May 2013.
Go here to read the full TIGTA report.
Editor’s note: Judicial Watch is representing the Washington Examiner in the newspaper’s federal lawsuit seeking access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records under FOIA.
