by TLB Editorial Staff
There is a lightening rod attached to President Donald Trump called the Internal Revenue Service. Trump’s biggest donor Billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are in a $7 billion battle with the IRS for back taxes. The Mercers want IRS commissioner John Koskinen to be replaced in hopes that will make their “tax bill” go away.
The D.C. Liberals are licking their chops and wringing their hands in anticipation of Trump replacing Commissioner Koskinen so they can call foul and start Impeachment Proceedings against the President. Do they really think he is that short sighted?
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Trump’s biggest donor wages war against the IRS: Billionaire Robert Mercer’s fighting nearly $7 billion in back taxes
via Jeremiadus
Money in politics is as old as politics itself. While some Democratic partisans like to imagine it doesn’t happen on the left, it is notable just how the philanthropy and campaign donations of large liberal donors like Google, George Soros or General Electric just happen to coincide with their business interests. That being the case, a look at the electoral and business ambitions of President Donald Trump’s largest political donors, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, reveals an incredible amount of intersection.
Like big-time conservative donor Cary Katz, who as part of a little-known provision in Obamacare, Robert Mercer’s family foundation donated almost exclusively to conventional charity groups and medical researchers, , until coming under intense IRS scrutiny.
Rebekah Mercer began redirecting the philanthropy after her father’s primary company, Renaissance Technologies, became the subject of an IRS inquiry into its practice of temporarily storing investment incomes in bank accounts as a method of avoiding higher tax rates. In 2010, the agency ruled that firms utilizing “basket options” were engaged in illegal tax avoidance and warned Renaissance Technologies, the world’s most profitable hedge fund, to discontinue the practice.
Renaissance declined to do so and in the intervening years, the agency has been collecting evidence, apparently, in preparation for a future court case. According to a 2014 Senate report reviewing some of the allegations, the company could owe at least $6.8 billion in back taxes.
Since the 2010 IRS ruling, the Mercers have dramatically stepped up their giving to conservative groups, particularly to those engaging in full-on attacks against the IRS and the agency’s commissioner John Koskinen.
The agency has long been on the receiving ends of journalistic attacks from Breitbart News, the conservative website that was formerly headed by Trump’s top adviser Steve Bannon. The Mercers are widely believed to have been responsible for elevating Bannon into his prime position within Trump world.
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