COMMENT:
The Hunt for taxes
Just to bring to your attention a scandal coming out with the Tax office in Australia pursuing aggressive revenue targets, and using unethical practices to generate it.
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ANSWER: The scandal in Australia with the head of the Tax office is shocking involving a $165 million tax-fraud syndicate scandal. The police have arrested people in Australia which is admirable. The 2013 US scandal about the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) doing similar acts of abuse of power was never prosecuted or really investigated. It was revealed back then that the IRS had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to a pretend investigation by Attorney General Eric Holder. In January 2014, James Comey, who at the time was the FBI director and walks on water, told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence warranting criminal charges in a neat cover-up.
Finally, in late September 2017, a report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for scrutiny. Finally, in October 2017, Trump agreed to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 400 conservative nonprofit groups who claimed that they had been discriminated against by the Internal Revenue Service. The settlement included an apology from the IRS and a very substantial monetary settlement. That’s how they do it in the States. Government is always above the law and people like Comey always protect the bureaucracy. He is now doing everything in his power to take down Trump for the bureaucracy.
The Australian Taxation Office and all its tax-avoidance investigations are now in jeopardy since the deputy commissioner is facing criminal charges and four of its officials stood down as well. This would NEVER happen in the United States.
