[Vision2020] Idaho tax commission scandal

[Bill London]

Open letter to Tom Trail:
Please read today’s editorial from the Tribune (reprinted below)  I hope you are as disgusted as I am with this commission....
What is going to happen to the Idaho Tax Commission this year?  Will the Republican Party allow this nest of cronyism and favoritism to fester or will the party clean it up?
What are you proposing to solve this problem?
BL
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Dissecting Idaho's metastasizing tax scandal
By [author]Marty Trillhaase [/author]of the[org] Tribune[/org]
January 5, 2011

Idaho's Tax Commission follows two fundamental rules:

l It plays no favorites. Mess with that and you undermine the fragile fabric of collections. With few exceptions, people voluntarily pay taxes. They do so under the presumption that everyone is treated equally.

l What you tell the tax man is your business. That's Tax Collection 101 for a clerk, a field agent or the four gubernatorial appointees running the tax commission. Breach confidentiality and you will face a felony conviction, a $5,000 fine, five years in prison and a two-year ban on holding public office.

Commission chairman Royce Chigbrow now stands accused of shredding both standards. 

Relying on e-mails and documents collected in another investigation, The Associated Press has pieced together this narrative.

If you're on Chigbrow's good side, you get a break.

Last year, Chigbrow's son, Cordell Chigbrow - who runs the family's accounting firm - requested a client owing $50,000 in back taxes be allowed to take 10 years to repay. Over staff objections, the commission granted the request. Three years earlier, Cordell Chigbrow asked his dad if client penalties in the amount of $931.20 and $644.04 could be waived. The penalties were waived.

And if you're on Chigbrow's bad side - or at least antagonizing one of his friends - you get stomped on. In this case, Benton (Skip) Hofferber - a former political contributor to Chigbrow's unsuccessful 2006 bid for state controller - was fighting his former employer, Boise Food Services. Chigbrow summoned Tax Commission staff to his office and in Hofferber's presence asked for tax data about the company. So much for respecting Boise Food Service's confidentiality. 

Elsewhere, the AP reported Chigbrow ordered a forced collection of Boise Food Service's assets, accepted the company's cashier checks, inappropriately asked the checks not be cashed despite a law to the contrary and then blocked a refund owed to BFS.

As poorly as this reflects on Chigbrow - and the political ally who appointed him, Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter - it also taints the entire tax commission.

For more than two years, a steadily growing cadre of tax auditors working in the specialized field of resolving disputes with big companies has been insisting that the tax commission cuts sweetheart deals with those firms.

Other than the large number of auditors involved - about a third of the people who have done this work during the past 25 years - and the courage it took for them to go public against their past and, in some cases, current employers, there's not much to go on. Because they are bound to respect the confidentiality of the taxpayers, critics can't provide specifics. The tax commission can't prove whether these tax settlements wound up saving the state money.

Chigbrow's ethical, professional and possibly legal lapses change that equation. 

It may be a leap to say someone who processes pleas for leniency for his son's clients or sides with a friend in another company's tax dispute would look the other way while a big taxpayer evaded his obligation to the state. It may be unfair to taint the entire four-member commission based on the allegations now swirling around its chairman.

But when people are denied a clear view of any situation, they connect what few dots they see.

Presumably, Chigbrow's case will resolve itself - either in the courts or in the court of public opinion.

But this scandal is metastasizing into the entire tax commission. What comes next should be obvious - a full, fair and open examination of those tax settlements. Republicans loathe the idea because it's coming from the left. Former Idaho Supreme Court Justice Bob Huntley, state Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, and former tax commission auditor Stan Howland want Otter and the Legislature to launch a five-member probe.

The longer Otter and lawmakers wait, the more they'll regret it. - M.T.
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