American Spectator

Zitat

---

Let’s start with the IRS, illegal immigration and fraud. We’ll come back in a minute to Senator Rubio and Congressman Ryan.

For those who came in late, a year before the IRS scandals burst onto the scene in early May of 2013, an alert investigative reporter for WTHR-Indianapolis (Channel 13), Bob Segall by name, produced a stunning piece of journalism. Segall’s video report is found here and we will quote from his story for the basics. The tale begins when an Indiana tax preparer, who requests anonymity, comes to Segall to alert the investigative reporter to a major league tax fraud. The bold print for emphasis is mine.

“We’re talking about a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme here that’s taking place and no one is talking about it,” he (the tax preparer) said.

The scheme involves illegal immigrants — illegal immigrants who are filing tax returns.

How it works
The Internal Revenue Service says everyone who is employed in the United States — even those who are working here illegally — must report income and pay taxes. Of course, undocumented workers are not supposed to have a social security number. So for them to pay taxes, the IRS created what’s called an ITIN, an individual taxpayer identification number. A 9-digit ITIN number issued by the IRS provides both resident and nonresident aliens with a unique identification number that allows them to file tax returns.

While that may have seemed like a good idea, it’s now backfiring in a big way.

Each spring, at tax preparation offices all across the nation, many illegal immigrants are now eagerly filing tax returns to take advantage of a tax loophole, using their ITIN numbers to get huge refunds from the IRS.

The loophole is called the Additional Child Tax Credit. It’s a fully-refundable credit of up to $1000 per child, and it’s meant to help working families who have children living at home.

But 13 Investigates has found many undocumented workers are claiming the tax credit for kids who live in Mexico — lots of kids in Mexico.

---

Zitat

---

One of the workers, who was interviewed at his home in southern Indiana, admitted his address was used this year to file tax returns by four other undocumented workers who don’t even live there. Those four workers claimed 20 children live inside the one residence and, as a result, the IRS sent the illegal immigrants tax refunds totaling $29,608.

13 Investigates saw only one little girl who lives at that address (a small mobile home). We wondered about the 20 kids claimed as tax deductions?

“They don’t live here,” said the undocumented worker. “The other kids are in their country of origin, which is Mexico.”

He later explained none of the 20 children have ever visited the United States — let alone lived here.

So why should undocumented workers receive tax credits for children living in a foreign country, which is a violation of IRS tax rules?

“If the opportunity is there and they can give it to me, why not take advantage of it?” the worker said.

---

Zitat

---

Now.

Here’s the problem — and it’s potentially a very big problem for Rubio and Ryan.

The two men, Rubio in the Senate as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight, and Ryan in the House, have aggressively gone out front on the issue of immigration.

Ryan has even declared that “I will debate anybody who tries to suggest that these ideas that are moving through Congress are amnesty. They’re not. Amnesty is wiping the slate clean and not paying any penalty for having done something wrong.”

---

Zitat

---

Then we got to see the actual text of the legislation. Rubio’s promised provisions are absent. Regarding back taxes, for instance, the bill requires only that applicants “satisfy any applicable federal tax liability” that has previously been “assessed” by the IRS. But a tax is “assessed” only after a tax return has been submitted or after the IRS has conducted an audit. Since neither of those things happens with illegal immigrants working off the books, there aren’t any back taxes to be paid.

---

Zitat

---

So.

What does the reality of the Rubio bill, and the aggressive defense of Ryan have to do with that year-old investigative piece out of Indiana?

Everything. And while we like both Senator Rubio and Congressman Ryan, their actions raise troubling red flags both on the immigration bill and their respective potential runs for president in 2016.

Why?

At the core of the Indiana story about tax fraud by illegal immigrants is yet again the realization that Big Government has gone off the rails. It is so far from the original vision of the Founders as expressed in the Constitution as to be hell-and-gone.

What the Indiana story of massive IRS fraud by illegal immigrants vividly illustrates is yet another story of corruption and government gone wild. It is the same story as the IRS — Tea Party scandal. It is the same story as the NSA-Edward Snowden issue. It is the same story as Benghazi. It is the same story as State Department cover-ups of tales of State Department employees involvement with prostitutes, sexual assaults, and illegal drugs.

Time and time and time again this always comes back to the incompetence and/or corruption of a government that is seen as being run by arrogant mandarins of the ruling class elite.

Knowing all of this, both Rubio and Ryan are out there actively selling the idea that this time government will get it right. That this time their solutions to an out-of-control illegal immigration problem— which relies 100% on a Big Government that has failed over and over and over again and can’t even manage to control the border — are going to work. Really. Honest.

---

This is a must read article.