Jenny Beth Martin, a founder of Tea Party Patriots, warns that the skyrocketing number of Internal Revenue Service agents under the Biden administration could herald the return of a politicized tax agency targeting conservatives.
"I said back then, if they're not held accountable, other bureaucrats will think that they are able to abuse the law in an even more egregious manner and get away with it," Martin, a Florida resident, said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.
"What concerns me is what we're hearing right now with these 87,000 new IRS agents, they have such enormous power, they can garnish wages, they can levy bank accounts, they can put liens on your property," Martin said.
In 2013, conservatives accused the Internal Revenue Service of unfairly targeting their organizations as they sought IRS approval for tax-exempt status.
The agency admitted it had selected specific groups applying for tax-exempt status--either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4)--for additional and intense scrutiny based only on their names and political affiliations.
Most of the time, the IRS targeted conservative groups, looking for words in their names such as "freedom," "liberty," and "patriots." READ MORE
