BBC (UK), BOSTON GLOBE, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK TIMES, REUTERS (U.S.)
WASHINGTON D.C.- President Barack Obama announced Wednesday night that acting head of the Internal Revenus Service (IRS), the nation's central tax-collecting agency, had been forced to resign after it emerged that the agency improperly targeted certain groups.
A special report released on Tuesday found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) focused extra scrutiny on politically conservative and Tea Party groups when they applied to become charitable organizations to be exempted from paying taxes, writes the Boston Globe,.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's report on the scandal placed the blame on "ineffective management", according to the BBC. It found IRS managers had allowed "inappropriate criteria" to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months which resulted in "substantial delays" in processing applications for tax-exempt status, and requests for "unnecessary information", such as lists of donors.
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An IRS office in New York - Mbisanz
Obama said that he expected the IRS to act with even higher levels of integrity than other government agencies and that, to that end, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had sought and accepted Miller's resignation -- something many Republicans had demanded, says NBC News.
"I've reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog's report, and the misconduct that it uncovered was inexcusable," Obama said in a statement at the White House. "It's inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I'm angry about it."
These IRS revelations have added to a sense of a White House under siege, and a president struggling to recover his political footing in the face of fast-moving events, according to Reuters.
The New York Times quotes the internal message that Miller, who had spent 25 years in the IRS, sent to employees: “This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS, given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency. I believe the service will benefit from having a new acting commissioner.”
