Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) speaks during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 17, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Rep. Mike Kelly came to politics late and, only in his second term at 65 years of age, the actuarial tables don’t favor him rising to become a Capitol Hill kingpin. He could retire tomorrow, though, and know that he made the most of one moment in the spotlight.

As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that held a hearing today on the the IRS political scandal, the Pennsylvania Republican did more than just join in the expected bipartisan grilling of outgoing agency boss Steven Miller — he scorched him, and in the process earned a prolonged standing ovation from spectators.

As you can see here, Kelly starts out in fairly routine fashion but then gets to the bottom line that most citizens can relate to — IRS chieftains can offer all the excuses they want about a poorly managed agency being the root cause for the untoward scrutiny given Tea Party groups, but John Q. Public doesn’t get cut that type of slack when its audit time.

Addressing a clearly chagrined and morose Miller, Kelly noted: “If you think it’s uncomfortable sitting over there, you ought to be a private individual when the IRS is across from you questioning.”

At the risk of causing his own immediate family to perhaps squirm a bit, Kelly later used a personal anecdote to speak truth to bureaucrats: “I have a grandson who’s afraid to get out of bed at night because he thinks there’s somebody under the bed that’s going to grab him. And I think most Americans feel that way about the IRS. I mean, you get a letter from you folks, or a phone call, it’s with terror that you look at it.”

Gaining a head of steam, he drove his point home with gusto: “You talked about — you’re a horribly run organization. If you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re not given that excuse.” When a taxpayer deals with the IRS, he continued, “You’re not allowed to be shoddy, you’re not allowed to be run horribly, you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re not allowed to do one damn thing that doesn’t come in compliance. If you do, you’re held responsible right then.”

The Mediaite website headline sums it up: “GOP Rep. Mike Kelly Delivers Brutal Takedown of IRS to Audience’s Applause.”

Kelly came to Congress as part of the 2010 Republican tsunami, knocking off a one-term Democratic incumbent in a district in Pennyslvania’s northwest corner. Owner of a Chevrolet-Cadillac deadlership he took over from his father, Kelly’s previous political experience consisted of four years on the city council in Butler, a Pittsburgh suburb.

The one time he had strayed from his Keystone State roots was to attend the University of Notre Dame, where he was recruited to play football. He got his degree there, though his athletic career was quickly sidetracked by a knee injury his freshman year.

Today, he got the ball and ran with it.

and look who was watching:

Must watch! RT @caintv: Rep. Mike Kelly levels blistering attack at IRS Comm. Steven Miller bit.ly/Z1QJu0

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) May 17, 2013

Original post is Mike Kelly’s IRS Spotlight for John Q. Public: Standing Ovation by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Steven Miller

Speaking of the truth vs. the whole truth, House Republicans did some selective editing of an inspector general’s report during today’s hearing on the Internal Revenue Service.

Steven Miller, the acting — and outgoing — commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, denied today that the agency had targeted small-government groups for tougher scrutiny of their applications for tax-exempt status.

Republicans at a Ways and Means Committee hearing pushed back on that, noting that the inspector general’s report used the word “target” 16 times.

“It’s a common understanding of the word,” said Rep. Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican. “And so I would just suggest that it’s a well-settled doctrine and we not waste a lot of time parsing on it.”

The count of 16 mentions is true — on a simple word search.

Each of those 16 references describes the allegations the inspector general researched, which themselves came from congressional Republicans.

None of the uses of the word “target” in the report describes the inspector general’s findings.

What did the report say? That the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to screen applications.

Original post is IRS: Republicans’ Own Selective Examination: ‘Targets’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

That thud you just heard was a 568-page pile of tax policy hitting desks around Washington.

The nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation released its summary today of the U.S. tax system (444 pages), various proposals to change it (45 pages) and comments submitted to bipartisan working groups of the House Ways and Means Committee (68 pages).

Lawmakers are planning to use the report as a guide as they try to rewrite the tax code this year and next. In a joint statement, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and top Democrat Sander Levin called the report “an important and comprehensive overview” of the tax system.

“The committee will dig into its details over the coming weeks,” they said.

The report is mostly a compilation of previously released information on our complicated tax system. It’s chock full of minutiae, from the depreciation period for municipal wastewater treatment plants (15 years) to the maximum adoption credit ($12,970).

Happy reading!

Original post is Lawmakers Get 568 Pages of Tax Code Guidance by Political Capital.

Photograph by Paramount/Everett Collection

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, with Deforest Kelley, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, James Doohan, and George Takei, 1984.

Star Trek fans might recognize the Internal Revenue Service as a somewhat Vulcan enterprise — logical, humorless and inscrutable.

Rep. Charles Boustany wants to see for himself.

The Louisiana Republican is pressing the tax agency to turn over copies of a Star Trek parody video the IRS made at its television studio in New Carrollton, Maryland.

While acknowledging that the IRS has a reasonable need to produce videos for employee training and other purposes, Boustany wants to see what taxpayers financed, and a private screening at the IRS isn’t enough for him. The congressman is chairman of a House Ways and Means subcommittee that oversees the IRS.

“Your agency’s refusal to timely produce copies of the IRS parody videos to the committee is unacceptable,” he wrote to Steven Miller, acting IRS commissioner.

According to Boustany’s letter, Miller has already said that the Star Trek parody and a Gilligan’s Island skit cost a total of $60,000.

This dispute may last more than three hours.

Original post is IRS’s Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island Videos Challenged by Congressman by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

A police officer rides a bicycle past the Capitol on Feb. 12, 2013.

The Congressional Budget Office says it should have sought more outside voices to look at a Jan. 8 report on international tax policy options.

The nonpartisan agency responded today to concerns raised by Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who favors a so-called territorial tax system that would exempt most income earned outside the U.S. from U.S. taxes.

“We continue to believe that it presents the key issues fairly and objectively and that its findings are well grounded in economic theory and are consistent
with empirical studies in this area,” Douglas Elmendorf, the CBO director, wrote in a letter today. “Nevertheless, because of the complexity of the subject and the diverse views of experts in the field, we agree that it would have been desirable to seek comments from more outside reviewers.”

The study came as legislators continue to explore ways to overhaul the tax code and address the system that has led companies to stockpile more than $1 trillion in untaxed profits outside the U.S.

The dispute between Camp and CBO follows a similar spat between Senate Republicans and the Congressional Research Service over a report on the economic consequences of tax rates on top earners. In that case, Democrats said Republicans were trying to politicize a nonpartisan agency’s study.

In his Jan. 24 letter to Elmendorf, Camp, a Republican from Michigan, wrote the study was “heavily slanted and biased in favor of one specific approach,” the idea that there should be no tax difference for U.S. companies choosing between domestic and international investments.

The report, Camp wrote, failed to “provide an equal and balanced review of proposals on territorial taxation.”

In his response, Elmendorf defended the study and the options it considered.

Original post is CBO Addresses Camp Criticism of Global Tax Study by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

A cardboard cut-out of President Barack Obama in a tent defending “Obamacare” at a street fair in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The 2010 health-care law that’s expected to expand insurance coverage to 27 million Americans in the next decade isn’t cheap: About $1.2 trillion through 2022.

There’s another cost, less well known: The time Americans will spend complying with the law and its requirements. And that figure may be even more jaw-dropping: About 127.6 million man-hours per year and counting, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The committee — chaired by Michigan Republican Dave Camp, no fan of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act — unveiled today what it calls the “Obama-care Burden Tracker.” The online tool relies on data produced by the Obama administration itself as it writes regulations implementing the health law.

Under a law called the Paperwork Reduction Act, federal agencies have to calculate how much time the nation’s citizenry will spend complying with their regulations. The burden is reported in hours as part of regulatory filings, and is summed up in a report from the White House Office of Management and Budget each year.

In 2011, for example, Americans spent about 9.1 billion hours on federal paperwork, according to the most recent report. In that context, the health-care law will only increase the public’s bureaucratic burden by about 14 percent.

“With many rules and regulations yet to come, these 127 million burden hours — many of them due to complying with new taxes — are just the tip of the iceberg,” Camp said in a statement.

Some of the burden, though, is voluntary.

For example, the most burdensome regulation yet issued under the 2010 health-care law relates to an optional tax credit available to small businesses that insure their workers. Complying with those rules alone would cost Americans about 40 million hours a year, the Obama administration says; perhaps an indication why many small businesses aren’t bothering.

A spokeswoman for the White House budget office, asked about the Ways and Means burden tracker, didn’t dispute Camp’s math. She noted that Obama has repealed some of the government’s regulatory burden, including a proposal yesterday to dump a handful of rules for hospitals in the Medicare program that the administration considers unnecessary or obsolete.

“From the start, the Administration has taken a balanced regulatory approach, focusing on putting in place lifesaving protections, while eliminating tens of millions of hours of paperwork burdens for our nation’s citizens and businesses,” said the spokeswoman, Jessica Santillo, in an e-mail. “As part of this approach, President Obama has launched an historic review of existing rules on the books to streamline, modify, or get rid of those that cost too much or no longer make sense, an effort that is already on track to save billions of dollars.”

Original post is Health-Care’s Added Cost: Compliance by Political Capital.

If it’s your Valentine’s Day dream to be questioned in public by Reps. Dave Camp, Earl Blumenauer and Vern Buchanan, you’re in luck.

The House Ways and Means Committee is holding an open casting call for witnesses at a Feb. 14 hearing on the federal income tax deduction for charitable contributions.

The approach could shake up the often-predictable format of congressional hearings, which usually feature a professor or two, a think tank expert and maybe a corporate executive or administration official.

If you want to face the dais in the Longworth Building, surrounded by the portraits of former committee chairmen, just send an e-mail to tax.reform@mail.house.gov by the end of the day on Feb. 7.

Put “charitable deduction” in the subject line and explain what you want to say.

There’s one catch in the announcement’s fine print: “In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, the committee may not be able to accommodate all requests to be heard.”

Original post is Valentine’s Day Card from Congress: Come See Us About Tax Breaks by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Captiol Hill.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says the tax code is confusing.

It’s apparently so confusing that he flubbed it.

In excerpts of a speech he’ll give tomorrow that his office circulated, Cantor plans to say: “Just filling out a W-2 at a new job is confusing. You shouldn’t need a worksheet to know how many dependents you have.”

Compelling, right?

Except that the form new employees fill out is the W-4.

The W-2 is the annual wage report that’s filled out by employers and sent to workers.

Cantor, a Virginia Republican, should know his tax forms. He’s a former businessman who served on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee until he entered leadership.

Then again, maybe Cantor just proved his own point about complexity.

Original post is Cantor Calls Tax Code Confusing — So Confusing, W-2 Talk Needs WD-40 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Rep. Charlie Rangel with an aide at a House Ways and Means committee markup of H.J.Res.118, a resolution of disapproval of the Obama administration’s proposed plan to waive successful welfare work requirements.

Rangel is back.

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in March 2010, is reclaiming some authority on the panel.

Rangel will be the top Democrat on the trade subcommittee in this Congress, giving him a voice on an issue he has worked on throughout his 42-year career in the House.

Despite his seniority, Rangel wasn’t his party’s top voice on any of the six Ways and Means subcommittees during the previous Congress.

Rangel, 82, was censured by the House in December 2010 for ethics violations related to his failure to pay some income taxes and use of congressional stationery and staff to seek donations for a nonprofit academic center named for him.

That didn’t get in the way of re-election.

And now he has a voice again.

Original post is Rangel’s Return: Trade Voice Granted by Political Capital.

Congress apparently hasn’t gotten the memo yet.

In the legislative session that started Jan. 3, House members have already introduced more than a dozen tax bills with ideas that would make the tax code yet more complicated.

They include an employment assistance voucher program from Pennsylvania Republican Mike Fitzpatrick, limits on the deductibility of executive compensation from California Democrat Barbara Lee and a tuition tax credit for math and science teachers from New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt.

New York Republican Michael Grimm introduced a bill to offer incentives for mechanical insulation.

They might need some of that over at the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee to handle all the paper headed their way.

Original post is Taxing: Where There are Ways the Means of Complication are Endless by Political Capital.