[throwaway_law]

Its certainly the norm for industry leaders to lobby and even propose draft rules/legislation to regulators/legislators...however, it is not normal for the government to willfully hide communications from the industry to government (which was done by the IRS in response to a FOIA request) and its outright illegal for the government to pay/reimburse the lobbyists themselves which the IRS seemed to do here. That's right your tax payer dollars were used to pay for lobbyists travel expenses to lobby the IRS to the detriment of taxpayers.