Lawmakers Ask TIGTA for Response to Audit Mishandling Allegations

September 10, 2019

The Honorable J. Russell George
Inspector General
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
1401 H Street, N.W.
Suite 469
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Inspector General George:

We are writing to request that you produce a full, unredacted copy of a response you submitted to the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which investigated allegations contained in a letter we sent on February 5, 2014.¹

In the February 5 letter, we raised serious concerns about the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's (TIGTA) compliance with generally accepted government auditing standards in conducting its performance audit entitled, Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review. These standards exist to ensure the quality, integrity, objectivity, and independence of audits, including those we rely on heavily in conducting the fundamental responsibilities of our Committee.

As explained, TIGTA appeared to engage in a partisan audit acceptance and initiation process; gave incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading responses to questions from Members of Congress; omitted key facts from its final product; failed to give Congress timely notification of new developments; and even made statements that could be viewed as attempts to intimidate congressional criticism of audit methods and conclusions. We wrote:

TIGTA produced a fundamentally flawed performance audit of the activities of the Internal Revenue Service's Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division that harmed the public interest to such a severe extent that trust and confidence in TIGTA's independence, ethics, competence, and quality control have been called into question and its effectiveness is threatened.²

Committee staff first requested your response to CIGIE on September 17, 2014, and they were assured by your staff that a response would be provided shortly. After not receiving your response for months, we sent a formal request to you on February 26, 2015.³ Unfortunately, you did not produce the documents at any point in the years since our request.

We are reiterating this request and expect that you will voluntarily produce the documents we have sought for over four years.

Please respond by close of business on September 24, 2019. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Gerald E. Connolly
Chairman
Subcommittee on Government Operations

Matt Cartwright
Member of Congress