Just a quick post to draw your attention to this Christian Science Monitor story on Nina Olson of the TAS.
This lady should be Commissioner Shulman’s replacement, but that would be too logical for Congress. Even if Obama were smart enough to do that, the Republicans would block her just to spite him. That is how the political game is played.
@Badger – Thanks for your take on Nina Olson’s “joke”. I don’t doubt her good intentions for a minute – she’s a huge ally and a godsend – but I was more concerned about the audience reaction. I hope these lawyers and law students really do see the basic injustice in all this and will have enough of a conscience to want to work for positive change – pro bono, even. But it’s a bit like The Force – it could just as easily lure some of them over to the Dark Side, where big piles of money can be made just by maintaining the status quo. This will become a fine test of character for many of them. Feels a bit like echoes of the early days of the civil rights movement.
I’d vote for Nina Olson as a replacement for Schulman! At least she listens to us.
@Jefferson, A few years back I had the privelige, and it really was a privelige, to particapate in a meeting with Nina Olsen as part of the ACA group that was in Washington hammering doors in Congress to be heard. There were about 6 or 8 of us as I recall. She certainly impressed me with her knowledge and understanding and sympathy with the problems being faced by Americans abroad, and the strait-jacket created for them by US citizenship based taxation. And this was before FATCA and the current IRS policy under Schulman of socking them with massive non-compliance penalties for having failed to file FBAR reports that they could not possible ever have known about. That meeting was the highligt of all the meetings I attended that week where generally the legislators staff members were very polite but I am sure could really have cared less about our councerns.
She would certainy make a great IRS Commissioner and I beieve if she were nominated she would be supported by Republicans as well as Democrats. But the big problem is the Strait Jacket of Citizenship based taxation which by law the IRS commissioner is obligated to enforce. Congress obigates the IRS commissioner to be the person who throws the switch on the electric chair to execute citizens living abroad.