Report: IRS officials used luxury hotel rooms

WASHINGTON -- Already heavily criticized for targeting conservative groups, the Internal Revenue Service absorbed another blow yesterday as new details emerged about senior officials enjoying luxury hotel rooms, free drinks and free food at a $4.1 million training conference. It was one of many expensive gatherings the agency held for employees over a three-year period.

One top official stayed five nights in a room that regularly goes for $3,500 a night, and another -- who was later promoted -- stayed four nights in a room that regularly goes for $1,499.

A total of 132 IRS officials received room upgrades at the conference in 2010 in Anaheim, Calif., according to a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration. The tax agency paid a flat daily fee of $135 per hotel room, the report said, but the upgrades were part of a package deal that added to the overall cost of the conference.

The report was made public on the same day leaders of six conservative groups testified at a congressional hearing, where they told lawmakers they had endured abuse from IRS agents as they spent years trying to qualify for tax-exempt status.

In often-emotional testimony, the conservatives described IRS demands for details about employees' and group officials' political activities and backgrounds, for comments they'd posted on websites, for videos of meetings and information on whether speakers at such sessions voiced political views. Some said it took three years to get their tax-exempt status; others said they were still waiting.

"I'm a born-free American woman," Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama, tearfully told the lawmakers. "I'm telling my government, 'You've forgotten your place.' "

Federal regulations say that tax-exempt social welfare organizations can engage in some political activity but the activity cannot be their primary mission. It is up to the IRS to make that determination of their level of political activity, and some Democrats at yesterday's House Ways and Means Committee hearing noted that some liberal groups also have had a hard time winning tax-exempt status from the IRS.

However, revelations about IRS agents improperly targeting tea party and other groups have led to investigations by three congressional committees and the Justice Department.

According to the report, expensive employee conferences were approved with few restraints or safeguards until new rules were imposed in 2011.

In all, the IRS held 225 employee conferences from 2010 through 2012, at a total cost of $49 million, the report said. The Anaheim conference was the most expensive, but others were costly, too.