"It was during a September hearing of the House Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs that Rep. Don Young, D-Alaska, grew a bit impatient with witness Christy Jacobs, director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Indian Tribal Governments,

At issue was an April letter from the IRS Portland office that stated per capita payments from tribal trust resources to citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs could be subject to taxation, reversing several decades of federal policy that per capita payments are tax exempt. A similar letter was sent to the Yakama Nation.

“Christy, I’m a little confused,” Young said. “Where did this idea come from? Which brainchild and what area of the moon did they come from?

“Did we have some little energetic individual that thinks, ‘I’ll go get those Indian tribes [and] they have to pay their money?’”

Jacobs acknowledged the letter was a massive mistake.

“I do not believe that per capita payments made to tribal members pursuant to the Per Capita Act from trust resources are taxable,” she said.

The very notion Treasury and the IRS would consider taxing per capita payments from tribal resources, exempt under the Per Capita Act of 1983, struck Young as a gross injustice."

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