The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "tax forms" ...
-
Broken Shield: Police force fails to protect state’s most vulnerable residents
Decades ago, California created a special police force to investigate crimes and unexplained injuries inflicted upon some of society’s most vulnerable citizens – men and women with severe autism and cerebral palsy living in taxpayer-funded institutions. This police force, the Office of Protective Services, works exclusively at state developmental centers that have been the scene of horrific abuses. We sought to bring this story to readers in many forms, from working on all platforms, distributing condensed versions and delivering broadcast video stories to our partners, to creating a graphic novel video on one particularly human story -- a woman who was raped, apparently by a janitor. We also created an ebook of the series of stories and an interactive tracker that detailed key milestones of legislation drafted and signed into law. Producing this work on every platform helped to maximize audience reach and heighten the impact.
Tags: Autism; cerebral palsy; taxes; taxpayers; Office of Protective Services; abuse
-
Trip to Nowhere
On the eve of a vote to raise taxes nearly 10 percent and cut spending, the stories laid out in detail how auto allowances routinely granted to dozens of county officials were not justified by their documented needs. Commissioners, department heads, and 15 of their secretaries and staff were receiving what amounted to bonuses that often exceeded more than 10 times what they could document in obscure but required forms. In a followup story, the county administrator reversed course and said he would study discontinuing auto allowances that exceeded the documented needs for two recently hired county watchdogs who were supposed to guard against waste and abuse. Finally, in a third story, the county acknowledged it had failed to meet states and local requirements to document "typical" mileage before all employees began receiving allowances, and said it would change its policy.
Tags: Tax; budget cut; finance; documents; fraud; corruption; auto allowances; bonuses; county
-
Ready Money: The Baltimore City Foundation
The investigation of a private nonprofit group, which was formed to benefit city programs for the underprivileged, revealed a number of shocking facts. Some of them being, that a number of city officials used the group to pay for a few items for the mayor’s inauguration and to avoid competitive bidding for the design of the visitors center. Also, some of the donations went to support political initiatives, not those needing help. The foundation was unaware of the happenings because they were asking few questions from the city government.
Tags: city officials; needy; Finance Department; city clerk; Lenwood M. Ivey; funds; support; philanthropy; agency; tax-exempt; Mayor Sheila Dixon
-
Colleges Use Cheap Loans to Lure Stars to Faculty
“Although colleges and universities have often provided housing for officials to live on campuses, in recent years they have also begun to use low-interest or no-interest mortgage loans as a recruiting tool, sometimes from their own endowments”.
Tags: education; students; faculty members; professors; teachers; money; compensation; perks; tax forms
-
Shriners' Investigation
Frost has reported this story for three years, picking up where the ORlando Sentinel left off twenty years ago by focusing on how the Shriners used charitable donations to fund mortgages for executives, directors and key employees and failed to report these transactions, specifically the mortgage satisfactions, on their exempt organization tax returns (990 form.) This past year, most of Frost's focus has been on the Shriners secret sub-group, the Royal Order of Jesters who were involved in a series of sex crimes.
Tags: Shriners; Royal Order of Jesters; prostitution; sex trafficking; drugs; nonprofit organizations; fraud
-
Mesa Community College
Community College administrators have been travelling to expensive international destinations, at the expense of taxpayers. The Republic investigatesd, finding "while the trips were billed as intense working sessions, financial records revealed that 87 college officials were spending more time sightseeing than working." Maricopa Community Colleges had presented the trips as part of a push to create an online learning program in China, "and to create partnerships with colleges in the Netherlands and England." That system includes 10 county colleges with an operating budget on $900 million. The investigation found that the director of the China Project "was hiding expenses from the college, writing herself contracts for work she didn't perform and paying employees overtime they didn't work as a form of reward." As a result of the stories, Mesa Community College suspended international travel.
Tags: Maricopa Community Colleges; Mesa Community College; College officials; travel; tax dollars
-
Wanna Bet?
In North Carolina, video poker machines are legal but under strict regulation. These machines must be registered and pay-outs must be in the form of merchandise. In reality, the regulations are laxly enforced,leading to an unknown number of machines and un-taxed cash pay-outs.
Tags: poker; pay-out; registration; poker machines; regulation enforcement
-
Exclusive Beach Towns Rely on Government Dollars to Rebuild
The ever-expanding definition of federal emergencies and the legacy of risky building along the coast have made disasters into a growing industry. Beach towns and resorts benefit from disasters by using tax-payer relief funds as a form of insurance for their municipal property. These resorts and towns carry very little insurance themselves, because they know that they can rely on federal funds to cover storm damage. The average number of federal disasters has tripled since the 1950s; since then, federal agencies have spent $140 billion. Factors such as loose criteria, lax financial standards and golf course subsidies add to the expense.
Tags: FEMA; hurricane; tropical storm; natural disaster; victim-relief; Federal Emergency Management Agency
-
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else
This in- depth examination of tax laws is based on analysis of government statistical reports, court records, SEC disclosure forms and other documents. It proves that America's tax laws are unfair.
-
Return of the Future: Disclosure law and Internet access spur new focus on charity tax forms.
According to the article, "The Internet revolution, and a recent change in federal charity-disclosure laws, mean that millions of Americans are about to have quick and unprecedented access to information about nonprofit groups: what they spend on fund-raising, how much money they devote to lobbying, and how they compensate their top executives. Regulators, too, will find it easier to analyze the ways that charities use--or misuse--their money."
Tags: Internet; nonprofit; fund-raising; lobbying; executives; money; charities