President Obama Challenges IRS Scandal Narrative

This post was originally published on Forbes Jul 22, 2015

So the latest in the interminable IRS scandal now on Day 804 by TaxProf Count is that President Obama has said in an interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that there is no scandal involving the targeting of conservatives.  What he sees as scandalous is the underfunding of the IRS which allows people to avoid paying taxes they legitimately owe and the complexity of the Tax Code which allows multinational corporations to entirely avoid paying federal income tax.

The President's explanation of the targeting scandal is that Congress had passed a crummy law that did not give good guidance and that people did a poor job of trying to sort out conflicting demands.   After all government is a human enterprise.

The President's statement has drawn some sharp reaction.  The Daily Caller headline is "Obama Lies To Jon Stewart's Face About IRS".

I had to check this out.

The IRS discussion starts at 7:10 and lasts less than two minutes.

There is one thing that I noticed that is subtle, but I think a big deal.  Stewart did not ask the President about the IRS (His main focus was the Veterans Administration).  The President picked the IRS to use as an example.  In less than two minutes he denied the primary scandal narrative, called for more resources for the IRS and called for corporate tax reform.

Supporters of the scandal narrative can, of course, point out many particulars that are not addressed in the President's statement - hard drives, the TIGTA report that indicated inappropriate criteria were used.  On the other hand they have yet to come up with that really great smoking gun piece of evidence that links the President to all the tsoris that Lois Lerner and the Cincinnati gang that couldn't sort straight dished out to Tea Party applicants for exempt status. Too bad that the President watched the Watergate hearings when he was a kid and knows better than to have damning tapes like the one I imagined back in January.

If the smoking gun is actually ever found, this interview might go down in history as Obama's "I did not have sexual relation with that woman" moment.

The Senate Finance Committee will be issuing a bipartisan report before long.  I can hardly wait.