In August 2010, Austan Goolsbee, serving at the time as economic adviser to President Obama, told reporters that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate income taxes. That statement was made at the same time that top Democrats, including President Obama himself, were demonizing Charles and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries, for giving money to Tea Party groups.
Mark Holden, a lawyer for Koch Industries, disputed the claim and asked how Goolsbee came up with the idea that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate taxes. Holden raised the question of whether or not anyone in the White House had accessed Koch Industries tax returns--which would be a violation of a federal law that was enacted in response to the Watergate scandal.
The White House never formally explained how it came up with the claim about the Koch brothers' taxes, but an anonymous White House official told Ben Smith, then a reporter at Politico, that it came from testimony from President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and publicly available sources, such as Forbes magazine and Koch Industries' website. Koch lawyer Mark Holden said the White House's explanation didn't make sense: "[C]ontrary to the administration official's statement on what sources were used by the administration, neither the Koch website nor Forbes' list of private companies has information regarding Koch's tax filing status. This is confidential information."
So a group of Republican senators called for the inspector general at the Treasury Department to investigate whether or not anyone on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board had illegally accessed Koch Industries' tax returns. "[T]he statement that Koch is a pass-through entity implies direct knowledge of Koch’s legal and tax status, which would appear to be a violation of section 6103," the senators wrote in their letter. "Alternatively, if the statement was based on speculation, it raises the question of whether the Administration speculating about any specific taxpayer’s liability is appropriate."
The inspector general completed the report, but it was never released to the public, despite FOIA requests from Koch Industries. "[D]ue to the confidentially [sic] provisions of the Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.) Section 6103, TIGTA could not provide information regarding action, if any, TIGTA might have taken beyond its review of the allegations," Inspector General J. Russell George wrote in an October 19, 2011 letter to Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. The inspector general wrote that the only people who could get access to confidential tax information are the chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee or the chairperson of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The IRS sent confidential tax information about right-leaning 501(c)4s to the liberal ProPublica, an investigative journalism website.
Why did he delete the tweet? Simply because it was embarrassing? Did he delete it because it was incriminating? Or because it was inaccurate?
A claim that both Koch Industries and the White House now agree is false (although we really can't know for sure the claim is false without seeing Koch Industries tax returns).
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0910/White_House_denies_eyeing_Koch_tax_returns.html
This claim, of course, came at the very same time the ... It raised the
It's not unusual for political opponents to attack big donors. ...
But it is highly unusual for the White House itself, including hte president, to publicly attack donors...
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