The President could choose not to enforce the tax laws, but he would risk impeachment by the House for breach of constitutional duty.
The leaders of the IRS, in particularly the Secretary of the Treasury, all have an independent fiduciary duty to enforce the law. If the President ordered them to not enforce the law, their only option would be to resign in protest, lest they be prosecuted.
The city has no authority to “overrule” the Federal Government. However, the city police do not necessarily enforce federal law, and the city may provide services to whoever it wishes, subject to state law.
Federal authorities would still be free to enforce immigration laws in New York City, or elsewhere, even if local authorities won’t, because the Homeland Security immigration authorities have nationwide jurisdiction.
US Attorneys tend to have a wide latitude about what sorts of cases they want to pursue fiercely and which ones they get very gentle about. I think law enforcement agencies have similar things going on. Often though no one says we are de-prioritizing vending machine thefts its just that they pick a few issues as having an insane level of attention which automatically de-escalates all the previous priorities.
If someone charge with enforcement of a particular law has stopped some aspect of enforcement entirely can someone seek a ‘writ of mandamus’? I don’t know.
Wikipedia says “In modern practice, the Court has effectively abolished the issuance of writs of mandamus”
I don’t know if you can stop someone from lackadaisical enforcement of some laws but it seems to me if its your job to enforce certain laws you can not just say " I absolutely will not and I order my subordinates to similarly refrain. I’m likely wrong.
It seems to me that as a practical matter, the president, following Obama’s lead, can render any laws he doesn’t like null and void.
Suppose a Republican presidents wants to lower all tax rates by 10%. All he would need to do is to announce that the IRS will henceforth not enforce any collection or penalties against anyone who does not pay more that his preferred 10% lower rates, and presto, it’s done.
Further, the president could also use the authority to create new laws. In the example above, the president could make IRS policy contingent on people complying with some set of new rules that he lays out.
A lot of posters here seem to be saying that the president can only prioritize etc., or are imposing other limitations. Problem is that even if those posters are correct in civics class, there seems to be no practical way to enforce a view of this sort in the real world (pending the outcome of the Boehner lawsuit).
And impeachment is not the answer, as a practical matter. Impeachment is an option if the president goes out on a limb all by himself, and says “I am creating a non-enforcement tax rule for all my friends and relatives”. But if the president’s party is in favor of a given proposal, which happens to be disfavored by the legislative branch, then impeachment is not a realistic option. For one thing, the president’s party needs only 1/3 of the Senate seats to vote down impeachment, and for another, the VP would likely take the same tack.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think it would be legally considered obstruction of justice if he flat-out ordered a law enforcement agency not to enforce a specific case.
The IRS is legally a quasi-independent entity. The President has no legal ability to interfere with what the IRS decides to investigate besides firing the guy at the top. Even if he finds someone who is willing to authorize shutting down/starting up an investigation, the minions that actually do the work might not comply. In this sense, the real power in the government lies within the executive branch employees who have had their jobs for many administrations and are the ones who know how to actually get things done.
Additionally, there are two different things that the IRS does: collect taxes, and investigate tax crimes. These two functions are somewhat independent of each other. If, in attempting to correctly determining a taxpayer’s liability during an audit, a Revenue Agent discovers evidence of a tax crime, s/he is obliged to stop the civil investigation into a possible tax deficiency and turn the case over the Criminal Investigation Division. Any sway that the President might have at getting people not investigated for tax crimes is not going to stop the IRS from assessing the tax that the government is due; he would have to influence a completely different set of people who are in no mood to deal with political bullshit and just enforce the tax code as it’s written.
I’m no lawyer either, but I did take a look at the federal statute on Obstruction of Justice and don’t see anything that obviously applies here. The offences described there refer things like falsifying writs, theatening jurors, assaulting process servers, and bribing law enforcement officers.
Enforce a specific case, or simply make some group of cases a low priority? That’s a pretty big distinction.
Obama’s immigration actions so far, and much of what he is rumored to be planning, fall into the second category. He’s not telling the immigration authorities, “don’t deport Maria Gomez”; he’s saying, “don’t worry about deporting non-criminals who entered the U.S. as children until after you have deported all of the aliens convicted of violent crimes, all of the aliens involved in the drug trade, and all of the aliens who fall into x, y, and z categories.” Everybody in the business knows that even with all of the new resources thrown at the Border Patrol, the immigration courts, and so on, there isn’t enough manpower to handle all of the cases in the designated high-priority groups, much less get to the low-priority groups.
The IRS is a regulatory body; the President’s hypothetical orders here would for IRS to cease its regulatory activities. The IRS only indirectly pursue criminal tax evasion; the agency itself can only impose civil penalties. Criminal matters would be referred to the US Attorneys, as you describe above.
ETA: in light of Glowacks, above, the IRS appears to have its own prosecutors that can seek criminal charges.
The president may prioritize, but may not *legally *refuse to spend money on enforcement that has been allocated by the Congress. Refusal to spend allocated money is known as impoundment.
So long as Congress allocates enough money to investigate and prosecute all cases of a particular crime, the president cannot *legally *refuse to spend the money to do so.
Of course forcing the president to do so might only be truly done under threat of impeachment. It’s not clear that there is any other enforcement mechanism against a recalcitrant president.
Wouldn’t the charges be applied retroactively? For example, Obama suspends tax enforcement for his final two years in office. New President takes office and changes the executive order.
What happens now? Usually the IRS requires records be kept for seven years and they can go after tax cheats. Would there be any legal protection for people that didn’t pay under Obama?
That first part is obvious but I wonder whether there is any legal justification for a president to ignore a law until it gets the degree of court scrutiny that he wants.
Responding to a heckler at a meeting of supporters of the executive action:
“What you’re not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law" […] I disagree with some of your characterizations, it does not make much sense to yell at me right now, when we are making changes."
One interpretation of that is that he admitted that he has violated the constitution. Another is that he was trying to dumb it down for the audience, speaking in plain simple language trying to make it sound like an ordinary conversation with any legal mumbo-jumbo.
I think the second interpretation makes more sense.