Is the Obama Administration Using Tax Information to Track Adversaries?

It's no secret that the Obama administration and its allies want to discourage the political activities of libertarian-leaning billionaires Charles and David Koch. As you may be aware, the brothers give a significant proportion of their political donations to the Republican Party and support conservative operations such as Americans for Prosperity, founded in 2004 by David Koch.

Lately, the political Left have been drawing attention to the brothers, painting them as secretive political operatives "out to destroy progressivism" and to launch an all-out "war" against President Obama. But now, as John McCormack of the Weekly Standard reports, "the administration may have crossed a line by revealing tax information about Koch Industries." According to Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel for Koch Industries, one senior Obama official revealed information about the company's corporate taxes during an on-the-record background briefing for reporters:

So in this country we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs, we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax. Some of which are really giant firms, you know Koch Industries is a multibillion dollar businesses. So that creates a narrower base because we've literally got something like 50 percent of the business income in the U.S. is going to businesses that don't pay any corporate income tax. They point out [in the report] you could review the boundary between corporate and non-corporate taxation as a way to broaden the base.

According to the Weekly Standard, Holden says the company is "concerned" about why this information would have been discussed and where the White House would've obtained this information from. "We also are concerned in light of recent events that we have been singled out by the government and others as a campaign against us because of our political views."

Click here to read the full report