John McCormack
The Weekly Standard
10/5/2010
The inspector general for tax administration at the Treasury Department will investigate the allegation that an Obama administration official may have improperly accessed and discussed private taxpayer information.
At an August 27 press briefing, a senior administration official, who appears to have been Austan Goolsbee, discussed the tax status of Koch Industries–a private company that has come under fire from top Democrats, including President Obama himself, for funding conservative and libertarian political causes.
“In this country we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs, we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax,” said the senior administration official. “Some of which are really giant firms, you know Koch Industries is a multibillion dollar businesses.”
A lawyer for Koch Industries objected to the official’s decision to single out Koch and asked how the official had knowledge of Koch’s tax status. An Obama administration official claimed that the tax information came from publicly available sources.
The article continues at The Weekly Standard.
