IRS audited James Comey, Andrew McCabe no bias, watchdog finds

A watchdog for the Internal Revenue Service looked at the selection of two top FBI officials for tax audits and concluded that there was no bias in their selection.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concluded that the IRS randomly selected their tax returns after a New York Times story revealed ex-FBI director James Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe were both audited by the IRS.

In its report, watchdog agency investigators said they did not identify misconduct during our review. IRS computer programs correctly selected tax returns for inclusion and did not include malicious code that would force the selection of taxpayers in the specific audit program at issue, according to the investigators.

The sample sizes for potential audits were smaller, but the new report said that happened because of resource constraints inside the IRS.

The IRS commissioner was appointed by President Trump in 2018 and stepped down from his position last month, according to a report from Charles Rettig. Rettig's talk with the TIGTA investigators said he had no conversations with the current or prior Presidential administration about the audit program.

Rettig was never involved in the sample selection process and never directed anyone to add or remove particular taxpayers from the audit samples, according to the report. Other IRS officials who were involved in the audit selection process told TIGTA investigators that neither Rettig or other IRS officials told them to pick or remove people in the sample pools.

The report has some concerns, according to Rep. Richard Neal, a Democrat and current Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Neal said he wanted to have more from TIGTA soon, and he requested a deeper investigation into the former president's use of the IRS against his political enemies. Comey and McCabe have been roped into an IRS initiative called the National Research Program, a random audit program that the IRS reviews tax returns in an attempt to find out where potential patterns of underpayment could exist among all taxpayers.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Comey's tax year 2017 return was audited in the New York Times in the year 2019 and ended with a $347 refund.

In 2018, McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In October 2021, McCabe learned of an audit on his tax year 2019 information and returns.

I had to pay a small amount for an oversight. In a CNN interview, McCabe said that the coincidence of him and Comey being audited does not conform to logic. Tax compliance and confidence in the fairness of the tax system may decline if taxpayers believe that the IRS targets certain taxpayers for NRP audits for inappropriate purposes, according to Inspector General J. Russell George. The IRS did not respond to a request for comment. It insisted that it did not single out anyone for audit in the wake of the report.

The IRS, for a decade, is poised to receive $80 billion for enforcement and customer service, as well as improve customer service and operations. With Republicans gaining the majority in the House of Representatives, observers say the agency is likely to have to face increased scrutiny and potential budget fights related to how it is spending the $80 billion.