IRS In Cincinnati: “Everything Comes From The Top; There Has To Be A Directive”

 

The fog of scandal hangs over a boxy, modernist, 10-story building that looks like a monument to paperwork. Shrubs and chain smokers flank its front entrance here on Main Street, in the heart of downtown. Every day, 2,000 employees go to work at various federal agencies in this John F. Kennedy-era structure, whose chief tenant is the Internal Revenue Service — which is having just about the worst week an agency can have.

Up on the fourth floor — with its gray linoleum, low ceilings and fluorescent lights, file carts heaped with manila envelopes, its keypad-coded doors labeled 4-022 (the file room) and 4-034 (the supply room) — the determinations unit of the IRS’s ­exempt-organizations office is at work.

People in this Cincinnati unit have been accused of using “inappropriate” and “politically sensitive” criteria to scrutinize conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

People in the unit, in a purple state’s red-leaning nook, have singled out applicants whose names include the words “tea party” and “patriot.”

People in Cincinnati have made people in Washington hopping mad.

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