cleaned some stuff up, but it's not the filter app, but the fact that parent tags aren't getting activated during import. I should check for this, but I'm not sure it's possible to make that make any sense, the fact that wordpress alows this is going to be a pain.
looked a lot closer at tag removal and refactored a bit. I let CoPilot help me fix it. Working now, but realizing other tag groups haven't really been tested. I'll ask P to help me out there.