New emails show Lois Lerner ignored complaints about labor union tax discrepancies

Newly released emails seem to show that in addition to allegedly targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny (and considering targeting Charles Grassley after accidentally reading a communication address to him) it now appears as if Lois Lerner was at the same time ignoring and brushing off complains filed against some labor unions if this story is true.

He is more about another potentially explosive scandal within the IRS:

The official at the center of the Internal Revenue Service tea party scandal once dismissed complaints that labor unions were not reporting millions of dollars in political activities on their tax forms, according to an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. In 2007, Lerner responded directly to a complaint that some major labor unions reported completely different amounts of political expenditures when filing with the IRS and the Department of Labor. At the time of the email, Lerner was the Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS. Lerner wrote, “We looked at the information you provided regarding organizations that report substantial amounts of political activity and lobbying expenditures on the DOL Form LM-2, but report little to no political expenditures on the Form 990 filed with the IRS.” “We believe this difference in reporting does not necessarily indicate that the organization has incorrectly reported to either the DOL or the IRS,” Lerner concluded.

It sure seems as if she quickly brushed aside these complaints without really giving it the scrutiny it would have received if this was a major donor to the Republican party instead of the Democratic party, so surely this must have been a small discrepancy, right?

Not really:

In 2006, the year leading up to Lerner’s email, the national headquarters for the AFL-CIO reported no direct or indirect political expenditures with the IRS on their 990 form, leaving the line 81a blank. That same year, the AFL-CIO reported $29,585,661 in political activities with the Department of Labor.

Hey, what’s $29 millions between friends? But wait, there’s more:

Also in 2006 the Teamsters Union reported no political expenditures with the IRS while at the same time reporting $7,081,965 with the Labor Department. Again in 2006, Unite-Here reported no political activity with the IRS and $1,451,002 with the Labor Department. In 2005, the National Education Association also reported no political expenditures with the IRS while at the same time reporting $24,985,250 with the Labor Department.

And if that were not enough she went so far as to offer excuses for the discrepancies:

But she did offer some possible reasons for the discrepancies. “The Form LM-2 does not separate this reporting from the reporting of lobbying expenditures,” she wrote. “Furthermore, even if section 501(c)(5) labor organizations were required to report their lobbying expenditures, the amount required to be reported on Form LM-2 includes activity, such as attempting to influence regulations, that is not required to be reported as lobbying, as the IRS limitations apply to legislative lobbying.”

Too bad she did not give conservative groups the same benefit of the doubt, but why would she? Move along, nothing to see here, there is not even a smidgen of corruption in the IRS…