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Monday, October 30, 2006
New Everson: We Only Politicize Tax Collection A Little
About-face! From BNA ($):
Political considerations were one of the factors the Internal Revenue Service considered when deciding to delay enforcement actions for Hurricane Katrina victims--but not the main concern, Commissioner Mark Everson said in a news briefing Oct. 27.
The upcoming November elections played only a small role in the decision to once again postpone the Oct. 16 deadline for about 1.2 million victims to file their 2005 tax returns, he said.
Everson responded to published reports suggesting that the agency wanted to cast itself in a favorable light to help Republicans retain control of Congress in the run-up to Nov. 7.
Let's take the Commissioner at his word (I mean, why wouldn't we?). Define small. Would the deadline have been pushed back if this wasn't an election year? Maybe it would have been pushed back for a different time period? How exactly would things have been different if we were approaching November 2007 instead? Everson, to my knowledge, doesn't say.
All that's beside the point, anyway. However significant they may be, partisan politics should not play any role in how the IRS collects taxes, or in how any part of the administration works. Commissioner Everson, want to try that backtrack again?
Posted by Matt Lewis
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