Conscience calls IRS auditor - reveals secret tax deal

Aug. 10, 2004, 12:04AM

Conscience calls IRS auditor
Woman risks jail for exposing secret tax deal

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New York Times

Remy Welling is a senior auditor for the Internal Revenue Service with 22 years' experience.

But when she was handed the file on a company suspected of underpaying its taxes, it contained something she had never seen before in such a case: an agreement to close the audit before it had even begun.

Instead of being given tax returns to examine, Welling was asked to sign off on a secret deal worked out by other officials at the IRS. The deal, she ultimately calculated, would allow a Silicon Valley company and its top executives to escape at least $51 million in additional taxes that she was convinced they should have paid.

Moreover, the agreement required the IRS to cooperate with the company, a relatively small semiconductor maker named Micrel, in keeping its shareholders uninformed on some basic terms of its option plan, which Welling said enriched its four top executives by as much as $20 million in total....cont'd

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2727697

get - buried and forgotten.

It is outrageous that former officials like Casimir can walk out the door of government agencies into the door of influence peddlers and try to pin the blame for their actions on career employees like Welling. You can bet that if she had buckled and signed and this had come to light, that it would have been portrayed as all her idea.

Unfortunately, she will suffer the fate of all those who really believe in the system and the idea that it works - she will be broken.

Nontheless, she really is a hero. I am personally really tired of rich bastards winning EVERY round strictly due to their ability to game the system.

He'p those who he'p thesselfs ... as long as a piece of the action is kicked up the pyramid.

I thought it was asking me to sign up for three free days or something, so I danced through all of the "free trial" stuff, and STILL can't read the entire article. (My version ends with the section about "immediately due taxes." Any chance you could post the entire thing? Or was that it? Thank you! :) Ida

You might try the link again. Sometimes I can get to the article and sometimes it asks me to register:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2727697

"The company, in court papers later that provided figures never reported to shareholders in official filings, estimated that its tax bill could have been even larger than Welling calculated — as much as $58 million, of which $14 million would be due immediately."

That IS the end of the article.

http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=533292.html

excerpt:

Welling said she did some research into IRS policies that bought her more time to look into the Micrel case. ‘‘But the pressure and harassment to sign off kept increasing,’’ she said.

In response, Welling, 50, complained to Everson, the IRS commissioner, that Casimir was wielding undue influence over the agency’s decision-making.

An e-mail trail shows that an aide to Everson read the complaint, but he evidently never informed Everson, who said he was unaware of it. A similar complaint to the Treasury inspector general was also closed with no action.

Frustrated by her failure to change what she considered an illegal decision, Welling went to the FBI. In memos she wrote at the time, Welling said that Yokoo told her she had no choice but to sign off on the Micrel closing agreement and resistance would be futile.

Casimir, who was the national director for appeals at the IRS before he retired, is one of many former senior tax agency officials who later took jobs with major accounting and legal firms representing clients before the IRS. But unlike other government agencies, at the IRS such ‘‘revolving door’’ situations are not closely monitored or well known outside the agency because all audits, by law, are handled in secret.

...more...

Yes, my copy had ended with the previous post. This was a very interesting article. :) Ida

Here's a hint- not the Democrats.
From opensecrets.org:

ZINN, RAY
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
8/7/2000
$500
Republican National Cmte

ZINN, RAY MRS
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
8/7/2000
$500
Republican National Cmte

ZINN, RAYMOND D MR
SAN JOSE,CA 95131
MICREL INC./PRESIDENT/ C.E.O./ C.O.
1/29/2001
$500
National Republican Congressional Cmte

ZINN, RAY
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
10/22/1998
$2,250
Republican National Cmte

ZINN, RAY M/M
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
10/15/1998
$250
California Republican Party

ZINN, RAY M/M
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
10/15/1998
$250
California Republican Party

ZINN, RAY MRS
ATHERTON,CA 94027
MICREL INC
10/22/1998
$2,250
Republican National Cmte

"public servants", my ass! Our young men give up their lives in Iraq just so they can make a living and have a family and a couple of kids. THEY are public servants.

And then our "leaders" and top bureaucrats have the gall to call themselves public servants. We need to impose SEVERE sanctions and deterrents upon them if they betray the public trust. Otherwise they simply sell us out.

I call upon DUers to join me in calling for the trial and public execution of these treasonous "public servants"!

This country needs a new medal. Or they should receive a % of the recovered funds when crooks have to pay up. Something besides the back of the hand, surely.

:kick: