Another powerful House chairman struck closer to President Joe Biden, vowing to send a criminal referral asking asking prosecutors to charges first son Hunter Biden with lying to Congress.
Read MoreTag: House Ways and Means Committee
CIA Prevented Investigators from Interviewing Hunter Biden Lawyer, New IRS Whistleblower Docs Say
A new cache of documents from the IRS whistleblowers released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee show how the Central Intelligence Agency directly intervened to prevent the IRS investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer and benefactor Kevin Morris.
The CIA’s involvement in the case was first suggested in earlier this year when the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees wrote a letter to Director William Burns that revealed impeachment investigators had at least one whistleblower who alleged the spy agency tried to interfere with a witness interview in the case, Just the News previously reported.
Read MoreThe 2024 Sunset of the Trump Tax Cuts Becoming Election Year Issue as Inflation, Cost of Living Climbs
The sweeping Trump-era tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 are set to expire next year, setting up the tax debate as a potentially key political issue this election year.
While illegal immigration and inflation top Americans’ list of concerns, both parties are increasingly talking about the Trump-era tax cuts, which President Joe Biden has said he will allow to expire next year.
Read MoreCongress to Leverage ‘Power of the Purse,’ Taking Aim at Big Education Amid Ugly Campus Riots
The debate in Congress over federal funding of education dates to the days of Thomas Jefferson, but for the first time since Jimmy Carter created the U.S. Education Department a large number of lawmakers are now openly discussing cutting funding and changing the tax code to punish universities that have failed to quell anti-Israel riots and force a shift from the far-left ideologies that have taken root on most campuses.
“I think that the American people are pretty outraged about this, and they expect the Republicans in Congress to respond in kind with the power of the purse,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show last week after visiting the protest-wracked George Washington University campus.
Read MoreWeiss Acknowledges ‘Ongoing Investigation’ in Biden Tax Case, Spurring Congressional Probe
In the legal back-and-forth between Hunter Biden’s defense team and prosecutor Special Counsel David Weiss, the government appeared to acknowledge in court filings the existence of an ongoing investigation as part of the Hunter Biden tax investigation.
The government said in a request to seal certain documents that “The justification for the redaction and the sealed exhibits is that the redacted information contained in the filing and the sealed exhibits relates to a potential ongoing investigation(s) and the investigating agency(cies) specifically requested that the government request that the court seal the exhibits, as well as any accompanying reference in the pleading, in order to protect the integrity of the potential ongoing investigation(s).”
Read MoreIRS Blistered by Internal Watchdog for Lax Protections of Taxpayer Data after Criminal Leak
The IRS failed to revoke access to sensitive tax systems from contractors who failed background checks and doesn’t have protections for some of those systems to prevent unauthorized removal of taxpayer data, the agency’s chief watchdog warns in a stinging rebuke that comes on the heels of a devastating criminal leak of tax records.
“The fact remains that for some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users,” the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded in a report this month.
Read MoreCongress Reaches Deal to Increase Child Tax Credit, Negotiate Tax Treaty with Taiwan
Congressional negotiators from the Senate and House of Representatives announced a deal on Tuesday to increase the child tax credit and negotiate a new bilateral tax treaty with Taiwan, among other matters.
The child tax credit was first enacted in 1997 to provide parents with greater funds to care for children under the age of 17 and was expanded in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act, though that expansion expired in 2022 and has not been reauthorized. The new deal — known as the “The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024” — reached between Democrats and Republicans in Congress will change the way the tax credit is calculated, increase the credit every year until 2025 and index it to inflation, according to a technical summary of the plan published by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Read More