GOVERNMENT/IRS/TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Americans can still expect to get their tax refunds even though the Internal Revenue Service has been swept up in the federal government shutdown. ‘Tax refunds will go out,’ acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought told reporters on Monday. He added that the Trump administration is working to make the shutdown ‘as painless as possible, consistent with the law.’ The decision marks a reversal of a long-standing policy that refunds due to millions of American taxpayers go unpaid during shutdowns. A senior administration official said that OMB is relying on a 2011 IRS memo that argued tax refunds can be paid out during a shutdown. At the time, the OMB’s general counsel disagreed with the IRS chief counsel’s position and said tax refunds could not be paid out during a shutdown. Faced with the latest shutdown, the Treasury Department last week asked the current OMB general counsel to revisit the 2011 memo and a supplemental memo was submitted to OMB this past Friday.”
–Donna Borak, Jim Acosta and Jeremy Diamond, “White House says tax ‘refunds will go out’ amid shutdown,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 7, 2019 7:29 pm