IRS may draft cops to catch tax cheats, official tells Senate

While the Obama Administration curtailed its involvement with local police agencies to enforce immigration law and capture criminal aliens, that same administration wishes local cops to help the Internal Revenue Service enforcement tax laws, according to testimony given before a panel of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday. 

Steven Miller, deputy IRS commissioner for services and enforcement, told the Senators on the Finance Committee that the increase in tax fraud, tax evasion and identity theft is a factor in the Internal Revenue Service’s senior management considering using local cops to enforce some tax laws and as a result sharing tax return information with them.

Tax return information is normally treated as top secret by IRS management and staff, but the IRS is considering a special program in which suspicious tax files may be shared with city and state police departments.

However, many police officers frown on this proposed enforcement activity. “We police officers are busy enough without being used to collect taxes for the federal government even if fraud was involved,” said Officer Edith Consorta of New York.

“We’re prevented from going after illegal alien lawbreakers, but we’re going to go after American citizens who try to keep more of their own money? That smacks of police state tactics,” said Consorta.

However, according to Miller, the IRS identified and prevented the issuance of over $14 billion in fraudulent refunds in 2011. Identity theft is a subset of this overall refund fraud. Since 2008, the IRS has identified more than 460,000 taxpayers who have been affected by identity theft.

In addition to criticizing the IRS plan to use local police in their search for tax money, several officers said they found it hypocritical to have the head man at the Treasury Department oversee the IRS when he himself was involved in questionable behavior that would have resulted in punishment for most Americans.

“Secretary Timothy Geithner’s own tax history makes him a prime candidate for a ’Hypocrite of the Year” award,” said former NYPD detective Sid Franes.

Meanwhile, Virginia Attorney General called Obama and his administration “the biggest lawbreakers to run the federal government in our lifetimes,”