Government business and finance

GOP questions IRS scrutiny of anti-abortion groups

UPDATED 6:19 AM EDT, May 23, 2013 | RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — When a small anti-abortion group in Iowa sought nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service asked its board to promise not to organize protests outside Planned Parenthood and demanded to know how its prayer meetings and protest signs were educational.

Although the Coalition for Life of Iowa's application was ultimately approved in 2009, the tax collection agency's treatment of that and other anti-abortion groups has gotten new attention in the wake of an ongoing scandal over the alleged targeting of conservative groups.

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UPDATED 7:37 AM EDT, May 21, 2013

Panel: Apple uses firms outside US to avoid taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found.

The world's most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes, according to the report issued Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

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UPDATED 7:46 AM EDT, May 21, 2013

Former IRS commissioner heads to Hill amid scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are getting their first chance to question the former head of the Internal Revenue Service, the man who ran the agency when agents were improperly targeting tea party groups.

Some of the questions on Tuesday will be direct: What did you know, and when did you know it?

They also want to know why former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman didn't tell Congress that agents had been singling out conservative political groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status — even after he was briefed.

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UPDATED 18:03 PM EDT, May 21, 2013

IRS Loop-In

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and other senior advisers knew in late April that an impending report was likely to say the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, President Barack Obama's spokesman disclosed Monday, expanding the circle of top officials who knew of the audit beyond those named earlier.

But McDonough and the other advisers did not tell Obama, leaving him to learn about the politically perilous results of the internal investigation from news reports nearly three weeks later, officials said.

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UPDATED 7:50 AM EDT, May 18, 2013

Treasury officials told of IRS probe in June 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior Treasury officials were made aware in June 2012 that investigators were looking into complaints from tea party groups that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service, a Treasury inspector general said Friday, disclosing that Obama administration officials knew there was a probe during the heat of the presidential campaign.

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UPDATED 7:53 AM EDT, May 18, 2013

GOP hopes IRS scandal will snag health care law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Political scandals have strange ways of causing collateral damage, and Republicans are hoping the furor over federal tax enforcers singling out conservative groups will ensnare their biggest target: President Barack Obama's health care law.

But no one appears to have connected the factual dots yet, and it's unclear whether they will.

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UPDATED 7:57 AM EDT, May 18, 2013

The IRS and its tea party tempest

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service is feeling the sort of heat that targeted taxpayers feel from the tax agency. It's the sense that a powerful someone is breathing down your neck.

Republicans in Congress are livid with the IRS over its systematic scrutiny of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Democrats agree that something must be done. President Barack Obama also isn't at all happy with the tax collectors.

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UPDATED 22:50 PM EDT, May 16, 2013

Subpoena of AP records revives media shield bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — The controversy over the government's secret subpoena of Associated Press telephone records has revived legislation that protect journalists from having to reveal their sources to federal investigators — and the White House is endorsing the idea.

The proposal wouldn't provide blanket protection for a journalist from having to reveal who he or she spoke to confidentially. But the government would have to convince a federal judge that the confidential source had compromised national security in speaking to the journalist.

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UPDATED 22:54 PM EDT, May 16, 2013

House bill protects homeland security budget

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican-controlled House panel moved Thursday to protect the Department of Homeland Security from the big cuts facing other domestic agencies under the party's budget slashing plan.

The move came as the Appropriations Committee leadership privately circulated plans to drastically reduce spending for labor, education and health programs, foreign and housing aid, the Environmental Protection Agency and transportation.

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UPDATED 6:37 AM EDT, May 16, 2013

Tech lobby, Big Labor fight over immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — To the U.S. technology industry, there's a dramatic shortfall in the number of Americans skilled in computer programming and engineering that is hampering business. To unions and some Democrats, it's more sinister: The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

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