Sharpton, businesses owe $4.7 million in tax debt

[Professor Peabody]

N.Y. Post: Sharpton, businesses owe $4.7 million in tax debt

Nina Schutzman, Poughkeepsie Journal 11:09 p.m. EDT August 3, 2014

The Rev. Al Sharpton, along with his nonprofit National Action Network and two for-profit firms, have $4.7 million in outstanding debt and liens, according to federal and state tax records, the New York Post reported on Sunday.

Among the debts include $806,875 that Sharpton owes the state, along with $2.6 million in federal liens against him for unpaid personal income taxes, the Post stated.

Recent filings showed the National Action Network owed $813,576 to the federal government at the end of 2012, and his company Rev-Al Communications owes $447,826 to the state, while the Bo-Spanky Consulting firm has $18.21 in outstanding debt, according to the Post.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/2014/08/03/ny-post-sharpton-businesses-owe-million-tax-debt/13556445/

Where's Lois Lerner and the IRS? Sharpton's National Action Network is a non profit, why aren't they being scrutinized by Lerner's Non-Profit unit? Anyone who believes that it wasn't just conservative groups being targeted need look no further than the National Action Network to find the answer to THAT question. Why isn't the IRS pursuing them? I'd be in jail already if I owed that much.

[texan]

You are a racist for posting this you know?

[Matty]

Wasn't Sharpton calling that rancher Bundy a "freeloader"?

[Professor Peabody]

You are a racist for posting this you know?

People calling me names never had any effect on me. If anyone does call me names they are A-Holes and we all know what comes from there.

[Professor Peabody]

Wasn't Sharpton calling that rancher Bundy a "freeloader"?

I believe he was.

[Peter1469]

This tax bill will never get paid!

[Professor Peabody]

Where's Lerner's minions on this one?

[Peter1469]

Looking for conservatives to attack.

[Mainecoons]

People calling me names never had any effect on me. If anyone does call me names they are A-Holes and we all know what comes from there.

You understand his post was very tongue in cheek?

[Captain Obvious]

Sharpton's a piece of dirt.

[Matty]

Where's Cede Gar?

[texan]

Let me tell you about Sharpton:

1. I used to think he was just a pimp.
2. Saw him enough on programs I knew he was a pimp but he became more human andI kind of accepted him as somewhat likeable. Not all his rhetoric but his willingness to debate and be open.
3. He threw character out the window and started attacking Bill Oreilly asbeing a racist. Total chickenshit! He did it to try and drive ratings because his sucks. (Side note: Dear Al they suck because you are a nimrod race pimp and are not in any way fair or even sincere. People tolerate others making points that are sincere and thoughtful even if they don't agree).
4. Oreilly finally gets tired of it and says this is who you are dealing with:"a couple years ago Al had his entire xmas supply of toys stolen a week before xmas for needy families he serves. Oreilly says I will pay to replace them how much? $20,000...........Writes a check. Asks that it not be publicized just keep it between them. Al "I am forever in your debt thank you so much for helping us."
5. Onto attacking him calling him a rotten racists person for wanting to talk about glaring issues that no one disputes, just can't talk about them I guess.

So Oreilly gets tired of the attacks and says this is the type guy you are dealing with, it reminds me of the old story about carrying the rattlesnake across the pond. It swears it won't bite you. As soon as it gets what it needed it strikes and says you knew what I was when you picked me up.

Before you attack Oreilly for bringing up that fact he did the good deed after saying keep it quiet, shut up! He is just illustrating what we are dealing with and it is valid.

[PolWatch]

I know its fun to say 'Obama dun it'...but he ain't the first:

New IRS Scandal Echoes a Long History of Political Harassment While targeting conservative groups may be outrageous, politically motivated audits by the IRS are far from unusual.
By Michael Scherer (http://swampland.time.com/author/michaelscherer/) @michaelscherer (http://www.twitter.com/michaelscherer)May 14, 2013[/URL]





Follow [URL="http://twitter.com/TIMEPolitics"]@TIMEPolitics (http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/14/anger-over-irs-audits-of-conservatives-anchored-in-long-history-of-abuse/#comments)





President Obama expressed anger Monday at recent revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative non-profit groups for increased scrutiny (http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/10/irs-admits-targeting-conservative-groups-over-tax-status/) during his first term. “If you have the IRS (http://topics.time.com/irs/) operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous,” Obama said. “It is contrary to our traditions.”
By traditions, he presumably meant the nation’s laws, which for decades have held that the federal government cannot target specific groups or individuals for tax enforcement without cause. But the IRS has a long history of disregarding this tradition.
For much of the post-war period, the agency has failed to meet its mission of neutrality, bowing to political pressure and resisting repeated attempts at internal reforms. On multiple occasions, it has become embroiled in scandal due to exactly the sort of behavior that senior IRS officials now admit occurred between 2010 and 2012.
(MORE: The Real IRS Scandal (http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/14/the-real-irs-scandal/))
John F. Kennedy (http://topics.time.com/john-f.-kennedy/) sanctioned an “Ideological Organizations Project” at the IRS that investigated right-wing groups. President Richard Nixon (http://topics.time.com/richard-nixon/) encouraged a secret IRS program called the “Special Services Staff” to investigate his political opponents and harass them with audits. And presidents weren’t the only offenders; the FBI has long used the IRS to harass political opponents. A 1964 FBI plan to “discredit” the United Klans of America called for illegally disclosing tax information about key members. Around the same time, the FBI initiated an IRS audit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-profit organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. One memo even suggested the bureau forge letters from King to donors of the group that warned of the ongoing IRS investigations, in the hopes of cutting off the group’s cash flow.
Some of the most egregious abuses of the last 50 years were undertaken at the behest of the FBI, sometimes under the cover of a secret domestic counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO. In May 1968, a memo was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. “The New Left on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau,” the FBI memo read, according to the Church Committee report (http://http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/churchcommittee.html), a 1976 Senate investigation on U.S. intelligence abuses. The next day, Hoover authorized a new program to “expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize” groups and individuals on the left, in part by employing the IRS as a weapon in the secret federal campaign.
Within a year, the FBI had directed the IRS to open investigations on 35 activists suspected of not filing tax returns. An FBI memo from that August of 1968 called for an IRS audit of a university professor suspected of planning protests to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The FBI hoped that the paperwork demands of an audit “may be a source of distraction during the critical period when he is engaged in meetings and plans for disruption of the Democratic National Convention.”
The Church Committee also found that between 1966 and 1974, the FBI obtained about 200 tax returns from the IRS. Of that group, most were for domestic intelligence investigations, largely of black nationalists and anti-Vietnam War activists. In 1968, the IRS program of cooperating with the FBI without asking questions was deemed “illegal” by a senior IRS official, though abuses continued despite the call for internal reforms.
(MORE: Joe Klein: IRS Scandal Means More Washington Gridlock (http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/13/not-nixon-exactly/))
By early 1969, the misuse of the IRS had moved inside the White House. Tom Charles Huston, an aide to President Nixon, recommended using the IRS to examine left-wing tax-exempt organizations to make sure they were complying with the law. Nixon agreed. Five years later, the House of Representatives drew up articles of impeachment against Nixon, alleging, among other offenses, that the President had used the IRS improperly. “He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner,” the document read.
Allegations of political bias have continued to dog the agency in the decades since. Officials at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claimed the IRS unfairly targeted the group for an audit in the 2004 election cycle to discourage political activity. In the 1990s, conservative non-profits alleged similar targeting by the Clinton Administration. An investigation into the 1993 firing of seven employees in the White House travel office found that an associate White House counsel had spoken of requesting guidance from the IRS about the conduct of the department. Days after the workers were fired, IRS agents visited UltrAir, the airline that handled most White House press travel.
Questions have also been raised about whether the agency targets its audits to avoid complicating the lives of Presidents and key members of Congress. A 2001 empirical study of IRS audits published in the Economics and Politics (http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/14/anger-over-irs-audits-of-conservatives-anchored-in-long-history-of-abuse/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0343.00090/pdf) journal found a clear pattern in audits between 1992 and 1997: “Other things being the same,” the authors wrote, “the percentage of tax returns audited by the IRS is markedly lower in states that are important to the sitting president’s re-election aspirations. We also find that the IRS is responsive to its oversight committees.”
The current scandal is alleged to have involved only low-level officials. The IRS claims that the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups resulted from an effort to “centralize work and assign cases to designated employees in an effort to promote consistency and quality,” according to an IRS statement. But the investigations are just now beginning. The IRS Inspector General is expected to release a report this week. House Republicans have pledged further probes. The full chain of accountability has yet to be determined. And while it may be “outrageous,” as Obama put it, politically motivated audits by the IRS are far from unusual.

[Mainecoons]

We know about Nixon. That doesn't excuse Obama. Nixon was forced to resign over all his abuses of power.

When will the media call for Obama's resignation for the same and worse?

[PolWatch]

We know about Nixon. That doesn't excuse Obama. Nixon was forced to resign over all his abuses of power.

When will the media call for Obama's resignation for the same and worse?

My purpose was to point out that using the IRS, etc as a political weapon didn't start with Obama and I don't remember anyone being asked to resign over it (including Nixon). The article goes back much further than Nixon.

Sometimes, I think this forum is populated by people who think all things bad started with Obama. He is guilty of more than enough to earn scorn, but he really, really did NOT take that apple from Eve's hand...honest!

[texan]

Uh this is abuse and a pattern with Obama. They should be kiced out of office for it because it as as rotten as it gets. We got rid of Nixon for this trype crap!

Clinton and Obama are the biggest abusers of the IRS attacking enimies. Same infrastructure set up by the Chicago mafia they both employed.