7 ms·

IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records

105 points by harold 13y ago

Shivetya 13y ago
As with many large and powerful organizations, it is not the top that is always the problem but the mid level players who wield their power either incorrectly or criminally.
300bps 13y ago
IRS agents are given tremendous power. When they abuse it, they should face harsher penalties than those not so empowered. Last night I heard on NPR the story of a New Zealand expatriate that did not file US taxes for several years as is required by every US citizen no matter where they live or how long they've lived outside the US. He voluntarily notified the IRS of his oversight and paid the $20,000 in back taxes. The IRS then told him his penalty exceeded $140,000.
- kbenson 13y ago
  I imagine if he lived abroad and still managed to owe $20k by his reckoning, his income and/or assets are non-trivial, and the IRS may have some cause to think he owes more (that's not to say they are correct). Unfortunately the US tax system is a very adversarial one.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Not really. A programmer earning around $100k could easily accrue that kind of tax liability over a few years, even after deducting payment of foreign taxes. (But not penalties and interest for the delayed payments)
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    Considering he had $0 taken out for taxes each pay check, and it was over several years, it's really not much. My rough estimate is he could have earned $60k a year for 3 years and owe approximately that much.
    - dmm 13y ago
      The first ~$95k of foreign income is excluded from US taxation.
      - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
        But you are obligated to file, even if you have zero income, and you are obligated to disclose assets, even if they're your spouse's. There are several more requirements not related to income, or even if the citizen ever lived in the US (many people have US citizenship and have never stepped foot here), each of which can carry a substantial penalty if violated. There are many people living in fear -- and many in substantial debt -- not about income tax problems, but about IRS filing requirements. The system is a monstrosity.
      - chiph 13y ago
        So he'd probably have less than 50k in income liable to taxation, and that puts him in the 15% bracket, so for 3 years his tax would be about 25k. How they got from there to 140k is an interesting question -- that's a hell of penalty & interest charge.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > given tremendous power. When they abuse it, they should face harsher penalties than those not so empowered. I think this is a concept that should be applied with a broad stroke across society. When someone who is empowered by the people (afforded special privileges or abilities by a government that is democratically elected) commits a crime, that crime is inherently twofold. Liability needs to increase in proportion to the amount of power that has been granted.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    They don't because liability risk increases as you apply these liability prone powers.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  > The IRS then told him his penalty exceeded $140,000. His penalty did exceed $140,000 though, they didn't make this up to punish him. That's what happens when you just ignore federal laws. After meeting with the IRS, the penalty was reduced to $25k.[1] A New Zealand savings account would have averaged ~4%/year over that time period, so subtracting the gains from his owed $20k leaves about $20k in penalties. What's an appropriate amount to discourage tax cheats? They're called penalties for a reason... are we just supposed to trust everyone who, when caught, claim they 'didn't know' about the law? [1] - http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-usa-taxes-foreign-idUSTRE7B723920111208 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-usa-taxes-forei... Van Horn contacted the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service, which agreed to work on his case. After a series of offers and counter-offers, he says, the result was a single "non-willful" FBAR penalty of $5,000 per year, or $25,000 total.
  - breischl 13y ago
    No, we're only supposed to believe they "didn't know" if they're the Secretary of the Treasury, or a Congressman, or something like that.
    - mikeyouse 13y ago
      Snark aside, there's a huge difference tax negligence and tax fraud. Not filing taxes for 5 years is fraud. Filing and paying taxes while working for the IMF -- but not realizing you should've been paying the 'employer' half of payroll taxes as well -- is negligence.
      - greedo 13y ago
        I remember someone telling me that ignorance of the law is no defense. And I would think it wouldn't be too much to ask that a Federal Reserve Bank President be aware of tax consequences/implications.
      - mahyarm 13y ago
        The USA is the only country that requires tax returns & payments of expats that make no income from their home country and no longer live there. I'm not surprised many 'normal' people are very unaware of these facts when they move away from the USA. On top of that you have huge accountant costs to file these complicated penalty prone returns even if you end up not owing any taxes year over year. It's still 'negligence', your IMF example is just in part instead of in full.
- mikeash 13y ago
  What is the supposed relationship between your first and second paragraphs, aside from both involving the IRS?
jgeorge 13y ago
I don't see why this is such a big deal. Under the new healthcare laws, the IRS is going to be managing a vast majority of American healthcare records anyway. I think these agents were just being proactive! Remember it's "theft" until you get someone to pass a law requiring people to voluntarily give you what you want.
- epoxyhockey 13y ago
  the IRS is going to be managing a vast majority of American healthcare records anyway For those interested, I found more info in the following links. Though, it still does not appear that the IRS would be privy to the exact details of medical care. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100711119 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100711119 http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12%20FR.pdf http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12%20FR.pdf it's "theft" until you get someone to pass a law requiring people to voluntarily give you what you want While this is very true, it is rarely applied retroactively.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  The only health-related records that the IRS will have under the ACA are information about what kind of a health insurance plan the taxpayer has. Under the law, people will be required to have a qualifying health insurance policy or pay a penalty to the government.
johnward 13y ago
Why does the IRS have medical records?
- uptown 13y ago
  Did you even try reading the article?
  - johnward 13y ago
    No. Why would I do that?
bjhoops1 13y ago
Hell, for $25,000 I'd let anyone take a look at my medical records! On a serious note, it's been a bad week for the IRS, but that agency is seriously struggling right now with a slashed budget and increased responsibilities. As David Cay Johnston, puts it "The IRS is drowning." http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scandal.php?page=all http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scand...
- adventured 13y ago
  I wasn't aware that the IRS has in fact had its budget slashed. The only thing I've seen is that they're expected to expand to take on Obamacare, and may not have the funding to do so. Do you have the specific details on their budget being cut? Hasn't Obama expanded their budget in the last four years?
  - bjhoops1 13y ago
    I am struggling to find budget statistics that go back to earlier than 2010, but since that time the budget has been flat at $11.8 billion (1.5 billion less than Obama requested), and thanks to the sequester they are experiencing a $600 million cut this year. At the same time, they have been required to take on new duties and are struggling to maintain the employment they need. Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/us-usa-tax-irs-hearing-idUSBRE93O1FO20130425 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/us-usa-tax-irs-hea... and http://www.irs.gov/pub/newsroom/budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/newsroom/budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf What's absurd is that estimates of ROI on IRS funding range from 7:1 to 10:1. So it's really not about the budget. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to speculate on what's really behind the underfunding of the IRS.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
A tragic story, but my money is on the IRS in this one. They do not have to have an ongoing criminal or civil case. The Congress back in 2008 saw fit to that. Remember the law where you had to start creating 1099s for every vendor you ran across? People yelled at that got taken care of, but there's a lot more in that law yet to come. [inset long discussion about the exact nature of that requirement] I'd be interested in knowing if it is still possible to keep your health records private. I used to self-pay and this was not a problem. But now? Where I have to be part of some aggregate that then assesses health risks? I'm not sure how it works. (And note the use of the word "private", not "anonymous")
- n3rdy 13y ago
  > A tragic story, but my money is on the IRS in this one. Or at least 20% of it is.
tptacek 13y ago
Am I reading this article correctly, that the IRS didn't sieze medical records but rather a collection of records that included a small number of financial records they needed and then a large number of medical records they didn't care about?
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  As I read it, they were looking for one guy's financial records, ended up taking millions of health records -- even after repeated warnings they were screwing up. "...According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company..."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- harold 13y ago
  What makes you think they didn't care about the medical records? Because they weren't listed in the search warrant? I wonder who gained access to this data after it was seized? What political party hack would not want access to "psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data" of current or future political figures?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    What makes you think the IRS does care about medical records?
    - chiph 13y ago
      Because HSA and FSA contributions & expenses are reportable.
      - SilasX 13y ago
        Right: If my tax-deductible Health Savings Account money is actually going to get me "stress-related therapy" in the form of a hand job, the IRS wants to know. And probably more than they usually want to know about these things.
pasbesoin 13y ago
For starters, I'd like to know how they handled those records. Was it in a HIPAA-compliant fashion? Regardless of use or potential misuse of such data, us "mere mortals" can face serious challenges just for improperly maintaining it. Is all this stuff sitting on some agents' laptops, somewhere? Given the security requirements for the IRS's own inherent data (or, I would hope they have such requirements), one might hope that the records are reasonably secure. But I can't help being somewhat skeptical on this point. And... such IRS requirements may not be HIPAA compliant. My point is, amongst everything else, if the government is going to run around vacuuming up data wholesale, we can also look at whether they are even prepared to... "properly", and consistent with the government's own requirements, manage the data that they hoover.
arbuge 13y ago
The IRS is an unwieldy animal (I hesitate to say "brute"; YMMV) that will only get unwieldier as the tax code gets more and more bloated. The average IRS agent is, let's face it, not a genius, and even a genius would probably get lost in that code nowadays. I got married last year and was astounded that the joint tax return with my wife this year ran to 50 pages and cost me $1,500 in accounting fees to prepare. I dream of the day when a simpler system like a national sales tax could replace the whole thing.
- cobrausn 13y ago
  Sales tax penalizes those living hand to mouth more than is probably advisable. I don't mind progressive taxation, but I would love to see them stop trying to do social engineering with the tax code and just charge a fixed rate based on income, period.
  - aaronblohowiak 13y ago
    sales tax is usually coupled with a reverse income tax (cash grant to the poor that decreases to 0 as your income increases) to offset exactly the problem you mention.
    - nightski 13y ago
      Or just a flat rebate regardless of income, as in the FairTax.
    - sixothree 13y ago
      Usually? Hmm. The proposed law in Louisiana did not include such.
- mullingitover 13y ago
  I dream of a day when a simpler system like only taxing real estate could replace the whole thing. Sales taxes are barbaric, IMHO.
  - 13y ago
ericcumbee 13y ago
This is not scary at all in the context of the IRS just admitted to going after groups that are political opponents of the current administration. Nope nothing to see here.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Stop right there and read your own post carefully. If those groups are indeed "political opponents" of the current administration, then the IRS has good reason to believe those groups are "political". Political groups have a different tax status than a group that is a church or other non-profit fraternal organizations. That is the law, and the IRS is correct to scrutinize them, in order to properly ascertain what category they fall under. Slam dunk for the IRS, right there.
  - rgbrenner 13y ago
    All 75 (ie: 100%) of the groups that the IRS selected for an audit based on their name were granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. So no, that is not a good criteria to base an audit on. And I find it appalling that you believe that it is acceptable to treat differently anyone the current administration thinks is their political opponent... and that you think it's a "slam dunk" that the IRS wasted resources auditing 75 groups, and then granted every single one of their applications.
mikeyouse 13y ago
I get it, we're all supposed to hate the IRS, but this is a really terrible article about some scumbag lawyers trying to get a quick settlement. This is just an new play on medical malpractice trolling.. And if there's anyone I trust to give me the scoop on the IRS, it's Wesley Snipes' tax lawyer! From the filing: A lurid but vague class action accuses corrupt and abusive IRS agents of stealing 10 million people's medical records without a warrant - including "intimate medical records of every state judge in California." Sounds juicy.. After being put on notice of the illicit seizure, the IRS agents refused to return the records, continued to keep the records for the prying eyes of IRS peeping toms, and keep the records to this very day. Peeping Toms? Getting pretty serious.. Adding insult to injury, after unlawfully seizing the records and searching their intimate parts, defendants decided to use John Doe Company's media system to watch basketball, ordering pizza and Coca-Cola, to take in part of the NCAA tournament, illustrating their complete disregard of the court's order and the Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights. The IRS agents had the audacity to order lunch and watch TV? How salacious.. So how did they end up stealing so many confidential records? "Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to 'rip' the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over," according to the lawsuit. "Moreover, even though defendants knew that the records they were seizing were not included within the scope of the search warrant, the defendants nonetheless searched and seized the records without making any attempt to segregate the files from those that could possibly be related to the search warrant." So they executed a search warrant, seized a server related to the financial crime they were investigating, and that server happened to have some confidential medical records too? And this is worth $250 billion in compensatory and punitive damages?
- joering2 13y ago
  > And this is worth $250 billion in compensatory and punitive damages? If you ever heard about RIAA cases where defendants were punished $250,000 per downloaded song, or $450,000,000 in total "damages", something like this should not surprise you.
  - 13y ago
ccdan 13y ago
How about the trillions they stole from ordinary citizens?

105 points by harold 13y ago

As with many large and powerful organizations, it is not the top that is always the problem but the mid level players who wield their power either incorrectly or criminally.

300bps 13y ago

IRS agents are given tremendous power. When they abuse it, they should face harsher penalties than those not so empowered. Last night I heard on NPR the story of a New Zealand expatriate that did not file US taxes for several years as is required by every US citizen no matter where they live or how long they've lived outside the US. He voluntarily notified the IRS of his oversight and paid the $20,000 in back taxes. The IRS then told him his penalty exceeded $140,000.

kbenson 13y ago
I imagine if he lived abroad and still managed to owe $20k by his reckoning, his income and/or assets are non-trivial, and the IRS may have some cause to think he owes more (that's not to say they are correct). Unfortunately the US tax system is a very adversarial one.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Not really. A programmer earning around $100k could easily accrue that kind of tax liability over a few years, even after deducting payment of foreign taxes. (But not penalties and interest for the delayed payments)
- jlarocco 13y ago
  Considering he had $0 taken out for taxes each pay check, and it was over several years, it's really not much. My rough estimate is he could have earned $60k a year for 3 years and owe approximately that much.
  - dmm 13y ago
    The first ~$95k of foreign income is excluded from US taxation.
    - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
      But you are obligated to file, even if you have zero income, and you are obligated to disclose assets, even if they're your spouse's. There are several more requirements not related to income, or even if the citizen ever lived in the US (many people have US citizenship and have never stepped foot here), each of which can carry a substantial penalty if violated. There are many people living in fear -- and many in substantial debt -- not about income tax problems, but about IRS filing requirements. The system is a monstrosity.
    - chiph 13y ago
      So he'd probably have less than 50k in income liable to taxation, and that puts him in the 15% bracket, so for 3 years his tax would be about 25k. How they got from there to 140k is an interesting question -- that's a hell of penalty & interest charge.
jlgreco 13y ago
> given tremendous power. When they abuse it, they should face harsher penalties than those not so empowered. I think this is a concept that should be applied with a broad stroke across society. When someone who is empowered by the people (afforded special privileges or abilities by a government that is democratically elected) commits a crime, that crime is inherently twofold. Liability needs to increase in proportion to the amount of power that has been granted.
- mahyarm 13y ago
  They don't because liability risk increases as you apply these liability prone powers.
mikeyouse 13y ago
> The IRS then told him his penalty exceeded $140,000. His penalty did exceed $140,000 though, they didn't make this up to punish him. That's what happens when you just ignore federal laws. After meeting with the IRS, the penalty was reduced to $25k.[1] A New Zealand savings account would have averaged ~4%/year over that time period, so subtracting the gains from his owed $20k leaves about $20k in penalties. What's an appropriate amount to discourage tax cheats? They're called penalties for a reason... are we just supposed to trust everyone who, when caught, claim they 'didn't know' about the law? [1] - http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-usa-taxes-foreign-idUSTRE7B723920111208 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-usa-taxes-forei... Van Horn contacted the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service, which agreed to work on his case. After a series of offers and counter-offers, he says, the result was a single "non-willful" FBAR penalty of $5,000 per year, or $25,000 total.
- breischl 13y ago
  No, we're only supposed to believe they "didn't know" if they're the Secretary of the Treasury, or a Congressman, or something like that.
  - mikeyouse 13y ago
    Snark aside, there's a huge difference tax negligence and tax fraud. Not filing taxes for 5 years is fraud. Filing and paying taxes while working for the IMF -- but not realizing you should've been paying the 'employer' half of payroll taxes as well -- is negligence.
    - greedo 13y ago
      I remember someone telling me that ignorance of the law is no defense. And I would think it wouldn't be too much to ask that a Federal Reserve Bank President be aware of tax consequences/implications.
    - mahyarm 13y ago
      The USA is the only country that requires tax returns & payments of expats that make no income from their home country and no longer live there. I'm not surprised many 'normal' people are very unaware of these facts when they move away from the USA. On top of that you have huge accountant costs to file these complicated penalty prone returns even if you end up not owing any taxes year over year. It's still 'negligence', your IMF example is just in part instead of in full.
mikeash 13y ago
What is the supposed relationship between your first and second paragraphs, aside from both involving the IRS?

jgeorge 13y ago

I don't see why this is such a big deal. Under the new healthcare laws, the IRS is going to be managing a vast majority of American healthcare records anyway. I think these agents were just being proactive! Remember it's "theft" until you get someone to pass a law requiring people to voluntarily give you what you want.

epoxyhockey 13y ago
the IRS is going to be managing a vast majority of American healthcare records anyway For those interested, I found more info in the following links. Though, it still does not appear that the IRS would be privy to the exact details of medical care. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100711119 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100711119 http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12%20FR.pdf http://www.irs.gov/PUP/newsroom/REG-148500-12%20FR.pdf it's "theft" until you get someone to pass a law requiring people to voluntarily give you what you want While this is very true, it is rarely applied retroactively.
greenyoda 13y ago
The only health-related records that the IRS will have under the ACA are information about what kind of a health insurance plan the taxpayer has. Under the law, people will be required to have a qualifying health insurance policy or pay a penalty to the government.

johnward 13y ago

Why does the IRS have medical records?

uptown 13y ago
Did you even try reading the article?
- johnward 13y ago
  No. Why would I do that?

bjhoops1 13y ago

Hell, for $25,000 I'd let anyone take a look at my medical records! On a serious note, it's been a bad week for the IRS, but that agency is seriously struggling right now with a slashed budget and increased responsibilities. As David Cay Johnston, puts it "The IRS is drowning." http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scandal.php?page=all http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scand...

adventured 13y ago
I wasn't aware that the IRS has in fact had its budget slashed. The only thing I've seen is that they're expected to expand to take on Obamacare, and may not have the funding to do so. Do you have the specific details on their budget being cut? Hasn't Obama expanded their budget in the last four years?
- bjhoops1 13y ago
  I am struggling to find budget statistics that go back to earlier than 2010, but since that time the budget has been flat at $11.8 billion (1.5 billion less than Obama requested), and thanks to the sequester they are experiencing a $600 million cut this year. At the same time, they have been required to take on new duties and are struggling to maintain the employment they need. Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/us-usa-tax-irs-hearing-idUSBRE93O1FO20130425 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/us-usa-tax-irs-hea... and http://www.irs.gov/pub/newsroom/budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/newsroom/budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf What's absurd is that estimates of ROI on IRS funding range from 7:1 to 10:1. So it's really not about the budget. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to speculate on what's really behind the underfunding of the IRS.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

A tragic story, but my money is on the IRS in this one. They do not have to have an ongoing criminal or civil case. The Congress back in 2008 saw fit to that. Remember the law where you had to start creating 1099s for every vendor you ran across? People yelled at that got taken care of, but there's a lot more in that law yet to come. [inset long discussion about the exact nature of that requirement] I'd be interested in knowing if it is still possible to keep your health records private. I used to self-pay and this was not a problem. But now? Where I have to be part of some aggregate that then assesses health risks? I'm not sure how it works. (And note the use of the word "private", not "anonymous")

n3rdy 13y ago
> A tragic story, but my money is on the IRS in this one. Or at least 20% of it is.

tptacek 13y ago

Am I reading this article correctly, that the IRS didn't sieze medical records but rather a collection of records that included a small number of financial records they needed and then a large number of medical records they didn't care about?

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
As I read it, they were looking for one guy's financial records, ended up taking millions of health records -- even after repeated warnings they were screwing up. "...According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company..."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
harold 13y ago
What makes you think they didn't care about the medical records? Because they weren't listed in the search warrant? I wonder who gained access to this data after it was seized? What political party hack would not want access to "psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data" of current or future political figures?
- tptacek 13y ago
  What makes you think the IRS does care about medical records?
  - chiph 13y ago
    Because HSA and FSA contributions & expenses are reportable.
    - SilasX 13y ago
      Right: If my tax-deductible Health Savings Account money is actually going to get me "stress-related therapy" in the form of a hand job, the IRS wants to know. And probably more than they usually want to know about these things.

pasbesoin 13y ago

For starters, I'd like to know how they handled those records. Was it in a HIPAA-compliant fashion? Regardless of use or potential misuse of such data, us "mere mortals" can face serious challenges just for improperly maintaining it. Is all this stuff sitting on some agents' laptops, somewhere? Given the security requirements for the IRS's own inherent data (or, I would hope they have such requirements), one might hope that the records are reasonably secure. But I can't help being somewhat skeptical on this point. And... such IRS requirements may not be HIPAA compliant. My point is, amongst everything else, if the government is going to run around vacuuming up data wholesale, we can also look at whether they are even prepared to... "properly", and consistent with the government's own requirements, manage the data that they hoover.

arbuge 13y ago

The IRS is an unwieldy animal (I hesitate to say "brute"; YMMV) that will only get unwieldier as the tax code gets more and more bloated. The average IRS agent is, let's face it, not a genius, and even a genius would probably get lost in that code nowadays. I got married last year and was astounded that the joint tax return with my wife this year ran to 50 pages and cost me $1,500 in accounting fees to prepare. I dream of the day when a simpler system like a national sales tax could replace the whole thing.

cobrausn 13y ago
Sales tax penalizes those living hand to mouth more than is probably advisable. I don't mind progressive taxation, but I would love to see them stop trying to do social engineering with the tax code and just charge a fixed rate based on income, period.
- aaronblohowiak 13y ago
  sales tax is usually coupled with a reverse income tax (cash grant to the poor that decreases to 0 as your income increases) to offset exactly the problem you mention.
  - nightski 13y ago
    Or just a flat rebate regardless of income, as in the FairTax.
  - sixothree 13y ago
    Usually? Hmm. The proposed law in Louisiana did not include such.
mullingitover 13y ago
I dream of a day when a simpler system like only taxing real estate could replace the whole thing. Sales taxes are barbaric, IMHO.
- 13y ago

ericcumbee 13y ago

This is not scary at all in the context of the IRS just admitted to going after groups that are political opponents of the current administration. Nope nothing to see here.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
Stop right there and read your own post carefully. If those groups are indeed "political opponents" of the current administration, then the IRS has good reason to believe those groups are "political". Political groups have a different tax status than a group that is a church or other non-profit fraternal organizations. That is the law, and the IRS is correct to scrutinize them, in order to properly ascertain what category they fall under. Slam dunk for the IRS, right there.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  All 75 (ie: 100%) of the groups that the IRS selected for an audit based on their name were granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. So no, that is not a good criteria to base an audit on. And I find it appalling that you believe that it is acceptable to treat differently anyone the current administration thinks is their political opponent... and that you think it's a "slam dunk" that the IRS wasted resources auditing 75 groups, and then granted every single one of their applications.

mikeyouse 13y ago

I get it, we're all supposed to hate the IRS, but this is a really terrible article about some scumbag lawyers trying to get a quick settlement. This is just an new play on medical malpractice trolling.. And if there's anyone I trust to give me the scoop on the IRS, it's Wesley Snipes' tax lawyer! From the filing: A lurid but vague class action accuses corrupt and abusive IRS agents of stealing 10 million people's medical records without a warrant - including "intimate medical records of every state judge in California." Sounds juicy.. After being put on notice of the illicit seizure, the IRS agents refused to return the records, continued to keep the records for the prying eyes of IRS peeping toms, and keep the records to this very day. Peeping Toms? Getting pretty serious.. Adding insult to injury, after unlawfully seizing the records and searching their intimate parts, defendants decided to use John Doe Company's media system to watch basketball, ordering pizza and Coca-Cola, to take in part of the NCAA tournament, illustrating their complete disregard of the court's order and the Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights. The IRS agents had the audacity to order lunch and watch TV? How salacious.. So how did they end up stealing so many confidential records? "Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to 'rip' the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over," according to the lawsuit. "Moreover, even though defendants knew that the records they were seizing were not included within the scope of the search warrant, the defendants nonetheless searched and seized the records without making any attempt to segregate the files from those that could possibly be related to the search warrant." So they executed a search warrant, seized a server related to the financial crime they were investigating, and that server happened to have some confidential medical records too? And this is worth $250 billion in compensatory and punitive damages?

joering2 13y ago
> And this is worth $250 billion in compensatory and punitive damages? If you ever heard about RIAA cases where defendants were punished $250,000 per downloaded song, or $450,000,000 in total "damages", something like this should not surprise you.
- 13y ago

ccdan 13y ago

How about the trillions they stole from ordinary citizens?