The Senate tax-writing panel accused the Internal Revenue Service of “gross mismanagement of the highest levels” in a long-awaited report concerning the agency’s targeting of conservative-leaning organizations.
The Senate Finance Committee issued the report Wednesday and it included bipartisan criticism and a conclusion by panel Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that “personal politics…influenced how the IRS conducted its business.
The agency has been under fire since May 2013, when an inspector general’s report found that an IRS division in charge of granting tax exemptions to non-profit groups had been singling out conservative organizations for extra scrutiny and delays.
Congressional committees have been investigating the matter for years, with considerable delays thanks to missing emails and a decision by Lois Lerner, who once headed the tax-exempt division, to refuse to testify before Congress.
The Finance Committee report made a number of findings, and blamed Lerner for poor leadership that botched seven attempts to speed up consideration of tax-exempt applications from Tea Party groups ahead of the 2012 presidential election.
“Every one of those initiatives ended in predictable failure and every failure resulted in months and years of delay for the organizations awaiting decisions from the IRS on their applications for tax-exempt status,” the report found.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the panel, was equally critical of the IRS management, but disputed politics played a role.
“The results of this in-depth, bipartisan investigation showcase pure bureaucratic mismanagement without any evidence of political interference,” Wyden said. “Groups on both sides of the political spectrum were treated equally in their efforts to secure tax-exempt status.”
The report includes recommendations from the Finance Committee, including an extension of the Hatch Act, which prohibits some federal employees from engaging in political activity.
The report calls for extending the act to “all IRS, Treasury and Chief Counsel employees who handle exempt organization matters.”
