By: Lauren French
6/13/2013
http://www.politico.com/morningtax/

FIRST IN MORNING TAX: BILL BANS IRS FROM SWAPPING MONEY. There were a lot of questions when the Treasury inspector general found that the IRS spent nearly $50 million on a single conference, including, where did all that money even come from? Turns out the IRS had leftover funds from leaving vacant positions unfilled and they that to finance the elaborate California conference. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) plans to introduce legislation to stop that. The legislation, dubbed the Stop IRS Act, would prohibit the agency from reprograming any funds slated for salaries, expenses, and personnel for being used for any other purpose. And if the agency found itself with leftover funds at the end of the year that money would be returned to the Treasury to fund deficit reduction. Turner told Morning Tax that he introduced the bill — which he didn’t rule out extending to all government agencies — would effectively end “backdoor budgeting.” “It is the worst example of government spending. There is an incentive to not fill those positions when the prize at the end is you get the money. It is like the lottery,” he said. The legislation: http://bit.ly/11IIUs3