IRS Stokes Coverup Allegations With Admission It Backdated Form

The IRS’s admission that it backdated a document in a conservation easement case and misled the US Tax Court about it is threatening to plunge the agency further into the partisan politics of Washington.

It’s a case in which the IRS is under fire for potentially violating the law and attorney professional-conduct rules in its crackdown against a type of investment it has put on its “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for several years. The IRS argues that investors have taken billions of dollars in improper deductions.

Hundreds of pages of court records piece together how the agency, probably ...