# Does the Natl. Educ. Assn. do political activities? Should they pay taxes on them? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 7, 2003, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051 "2003-04-07T13:18:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/1 "2003-04-07T13:18:50Z")
Landmark Legal Foundation, a public-interest group has been fighting the NEA for some time. Landmark alleges that, “As much as one-third of the tax-exempt National Education Association’s yearly $271 million income goes toward politically related activities.” Of course, donations for political activities are not supposed to be tax-exempt. In the past, Landmark has alleged that the NEA failed to report properly its political activites. “Each year for the past 10 years, the NEA has reported spending zero dollars for political purposes in tax returns as a Section 501©(5) tax-exempt labor union under the Internal Revenue Code.” Now [Landmark has asked the IRS to investigate and recoup the appropriate taxes](http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030407-741829.htm) for NEA political activities that are not tax-exempt. The amount of taxes on up to one third of $271 million a year could be big money. The NEA defends itself: > [@](#): > > “The Landmark Legal Foundation has misrepresented NEA’s activities,” said Kathleen P. Lyons, the NEA’s chief spokeswoman. “To be sure, NEA uses general treasury funds to pay for political activity in the general sense of the term. But it does not, contrary to LLF’s assertions, use such funds to pay for the type of political activity expenditures that should be reported to the IRS under that designation.” > > She said NEA expenses for a variety of activities — including “lobbying Congress in support of legislation that will promote public education” and “assisting NEA affiliates in encouraging NEA members to vote for pro-public education candidates running for public office” — are not reportable to the IRS as political expenditures. Questions for debate:[ol][li]Does the NEA perform a large amount of political activities?[_]Will Landmark’s efforts succeed? [_]Will the NEA be forced to change their reporting?[_]Will the NEA pay taxes on their political activities?[_]Will Landmark’s battle against the NEA have a significant political impact?[/ol]My impression is that the NEA does indeed perform political activities. If they were curtailed, the reduction of support to the Democrats would be a big blow to them.[/li] However, the NEA is so important to the Democratic Party that they will be well-defended. Furthermore, legal and tax questions are complex. Skillful lawyers may be able to find reasons to justify the NEA practices. Or, they may be able to delay the investigation for years. Finally, even if the NEA eventually loses, they might be able to simply change their formal structure, and keep doing what they have been doing. In short, I fully support Landmark’s efforts, but I am pessimistic. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/2 "2003-04-07T15:10:06Z")
The Libertarian Party says one of their solutions to the education problems in America is: > [@](#): > > Eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, which spends billions on education and educates no one. The growth of this agency and its numerous regulations is a major reason for runaway costs in American schools. Since first reading this years ago I have often wondered what the straight dope on the US Dept. of Education is. Is the NEA a subset of this organization? ---
**Author:** ![tramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tramp)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/3 "2003-04-07T15:28:52Z")
December- Just so you know, 501 © (5)'s can do political lobbying they just cannot have a PAC or the PAC has to be formed separate from the 501 © (5). I know this because I do lobbying for a 501 © (3) which is similar to the tax status of NEA. There are legal limits to what direct lobbying expenditures such organizations can have. For instance, the PACs can hand over checks to the elected official of their choice, host dinners and functions for them, etc. We cannot do anything of that sort. we can, however, meet with legislators, encourage our members to meet with their legislators, bring our members here to meet on Capitol Hill, etc. Those type of expenses are not direct lobbying expenses so we can have those. Also, our executive director, staff and our association members can open their personal pocketbooks at any time to lobby and while we encourage that, they are not directly speaking for our association. I don’t see anything wrong with NEA. I think they play by the rules. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/4 "2003-04-07T16:05:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Debaser \* > \*\*Since first reading this years ago I have often wondered what the straight dope on the US Dept. of Education is. Is the NEA a subset of this organization? \*\* The US Department of Education is a Federal agency that sets national standards for schools, gives aid to school districts, provides subsidized federal loans for college students, etc. [www.ed.gov](http://www.ed.gov) The NEA is a lobbying/public interest/continuing education group made up of American teachers. It’s a private organization. [http://www.nea.org](http://www.nea.org) The two groups aren’t related. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/5 "2003-04-07T16:05:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tramp \* > \*\*December- > > Just so you know, 501 © (5)'s can do political lobbying they just cannot have a PAC or the PAC has to be formed separate from the 501 © (5). I know this because I do lobbying for a 501 © (3) which is similar to the tax status of NEA. > > There are legal limits to what direct lobbying expenditures such organizations can have. For instance, the PACs can hand over checks to the elected official of their choice, host dinners and functions for them, etc… \*\* Thanks for the clarification, **tramp**. The allegations of Landmark is that the NEA actually engages in campaiging, which they say is obviously a political activity. > [@](#): > > State and local NEA affiliates spend an additional $43 million for the UniServ network, which enables the union to select, train, and fund at least one employee in each congressional district to link all 13,000 local affiliates. > > “They’re precinct workers,” Mark R. Levin, Landmark’s president, said of NEA UniServ directors. “It is the largest army of campaign workers that any organization has. They’re free to do it — they just have to pay taxes on it.” > > According to NEA documents, UniServ directors administer fund-raising solicitations for the NEA’s political action committee, organize selection of union delegates to party nominating conventions, and organize activities to support NEA-endorsed candidates during election campaigns. > > “Documents show UniServ is paid out of NEA’s general revenues, not its political action committee,” Mr. Levin said. Each year for the past 10 years, the NEA has reported spending zero dollars for political purposes in tax returns as a Section 501©(5) tax-exempt labor union under the Internal Revenue Code, he said. As I read this, the PAC is avowedly political. Donations to the PAC are not claimed as tax-deductible. No problems alleged about the PAC. Landmark seems to say that UniServ directors is also political, but it is not reported as such. It appears that the sides disagree about whether UniServ’s many representatives are campaining or just lobbying. Making that distinction would require an audit of their activities, not just their finances. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/6 "2003-04-07T16:56:00Z")
Note that the hamsters failed to bump this thread after the last two posts. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Captain Amazing \* > \*\*The US Department of Education is a Federal agency that sets national standards for schools, gives aid to school districts, provides subsidized federal loans for college students, etc. > > The NEA is a lobbying/public interest/continuing education group made up of American teachers. It’s a private organization. > > The two groups aren’t related. \*\* Right. However, I sometimes see both bodies described as a part of the “education establisment.” Their POVs seem to generally agree. I wonder if there’s a reason. E.g., do employees often move between these organizations? Do employees attend many meetings together? Would I be right in guessing that the the Dept. of Education is lobbied a lot by the NEA? ---
**Author:** ![tramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tramp)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/7 "2003-04-07T19:36:39Z")
Everything on Capitol Hill is lobbied by NEA. They are one of the big boys in the not for profit lobbying up here because their membership base is so huge. And because their membership is so huge many of their members work for the government. And maybe I’m missing something but I still fail to see the problem. Unless NEA, the not for profit arm, is coming out and saying “Vote X for President!” of handing out checks to X, then they aren’t breaking any rules. That whole UniServ thing I find to be complete hogwash. There is no lobbying restriction on training your members in government relations. We fly our members here for week long training every year and send them back to their districts to train their sections and branches. I find it extremely hard to believe that a well oiled machine like NEA could make a gross oversight of lobbying rules and disclosure. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/8 "2003-04-07T20:48:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tramp \* > \*\*I find it extremely hard to believe that a well oiled machine like NEA could make a gross oversight of lobbying rules and disclosure. \*\* That seems like a reasonable POV to me. It also means that in the unlikely event that Landmark eventually wins this battle, it would be a cataclysmic result. Landmark has been after the NEA for several years, so far without success. [E.g.](http://www.landmarklegal.org/tickerstory.cfm?webpage_id=533) they demanded that the NEA release the tax returns for its political action committee (PAC) since 1994, claiming that they would provide evidence that the NEA was using tax-exempt general revenue in addition to its PAC funds to influence the outcome of political campaigns." Landmark is now monitoring specific NEA activities countrywide > [@](#): > > Landmark Legal Foundation announced today that it has included the political activities and expenditures of every National Education Association (NEA) state affiliate in its ongoing efforts to monitor the union’s compliance with federal tax, election and labor reporting laws. The announcement signals a major expansion of Landmark’s five-year old NEA Accountability Project. > > “It seems that NEA’s state affiliates have no more respect for federal law than their national union,” explained Landmark President Mark R. Levin.\*\* “In state after state throughout this last election cycle, NEA affiliates appear to have loaned union employees to run and work in campaigns, used tax-exempt, members’ dues to post political advertising on websites in support of specific candidates, hold candidate rallies, and hand out campaign literature and signs. Only a handful of affiliates appear to have made any effort to segregate their political expenditures from their general revenue.” \*\* (emphasis added) In this 2001 complaint, [Landmark alleged that the NEA was virtually an arm of the Democratic Party.](http://www.landmarklegal.org/latest_developments.cfm?webpage_id=492) > [@](#): > > Landmark’s complaint provides overwhelming evidence of the NEA’s political activities, including its key role as a member of the so-called “Coordinated Campaign Steering Committee,” which set national and statewide campaign strategy for the election of Democratic candidates. In addition to the NEA and the DNC, other members of the Steering Committee were the 1996 Clinton-Gore Campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors’ Association, the Democratic Leadership Campaign Committee, the AFL-CIO, and Emily’s List. Landmark’s complaint also reveals the involvement of the NEA’s state affiliates in coordinating campaign activity with Democratic congressional candidates. > > …The evidence Landmark is making public today demonstrates that the NEA has become an appendage of the Democratic Party, complete with an ATM machine that dispenses tax-exempt membership dues to underwrite that party’s political activities. The NEA has concealed these activities from America’s teachers, the public and the IRS. These are strong, and perhaps overly hyped, accusations. Still, if Landmark’s claims could be supported, they would seem to justify being described as political activity. I find it easy to believe that any organization which isn’t held to the law could become careless about obeying it. A personal story. Years ago, I hired someone to oversee the regulatory compliance area of a small insurance company for which I was an executive. The new hire discovered that all sorts of state filings were not proper. It turned out that the guy who had been doing them for years just didn’t know any better. OTOH he had never gotten in any trouble either. It appears that the state regulators also didn’t know any better or just didn’t care. These filings were really just formalities, but if some state regulator had decided to make a fuss and fully investigate the accuracy of our filings, we might have been in some amount of trouble. ---
**Author:** ![Priam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/77aa72/32.png) [@Priam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Priam)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/9 "2003-04-07T21:52:34Z")
What is Landmark’s side of things? One doesn’t attack another organization without some sort of motive. I’m sure they’re going on and on about “fair play” and the like, but plenty of very large organizations would probably make better targets. Why NEA? ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/10 "2003-04-07T22:27:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Priam \* > \*\*What is Landmark’s side of things? One doesn’t attack another organization without some sort of motive. I’m sure they’re going on and on about “fair play” and the like, but plenty of very large organizations would probably make better targets. Why NEA? \*\* Landmark Legal is a conservative organization that supports civil liberties and opposes corruption. It’s kind of a conservative counterpart to Common Cause and the ACLU, although it’s much smaller. It was a big supporter of school vouchers. [This page](http://www.landmarklegal.org/) shows some of the issues they’ve taken on. I will speculate that the NEA was a good target, because they were violating the law, from Landmark’s POV, and they provide major support to Democrats. Landmark is itself a 501©(3) tax-exempt organization, so they may be especially focused on non-compliance with those rules. ---
**Author:** ![tramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tramp)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/11 "2003-04-08T02:34:33Z")
But, I don’t see the huge consequences. Even in the UNLIKELY event that Landmark is correct and they win the lawsuit, all NEA would have to do is pay some fine. And believe me, they can afford it. That doesn’t give them an excuse to break the rules but I believe so firmly that NEA isn’t guilty of anything that this seems like a completely worthless cause. NEA is a fairly innocous organization. Why doesn’t Landmark attack the usual Republican targets- minority lobbying groups, women’s right lobbying groups, unions, etc. etc. etc. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Lao](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dr.Lao](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Lao)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/12 "2003-04-08T03:34:11Z")
I’d imagine it is because teachers vote. And they generally vote Democratic. ---
**Author:** ![tramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tramp)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/13 "2003-04-08T13:10:48Z")
Oh, well in that case… :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2003, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-natl-educ-assn-do-political-activities-should-they-pay-taxes-on-them/167051/14 "2003-04-08T13:20:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dr. Lao \* > \*\*I’d imagine it is because teachers vote. And they generally vote Democratic. \*\* This is true, but even more to the point, the NEA specifically works for Democrats. There’s no doubt that Mark Levin, who heads Landmark, is pro-Republican. His web site says he previously served in several top positions in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. He was Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; an Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States; and an Associate Director of Presidential Personnel at the White House. BTW it occurs to me that Landmark Legal may achieve some success just by their efforts to carefully monitor local NEA activities. Local NEA units may be deterred from their alleged practices of loaning union employees to run and work in campaigns, using tax-exempt, members’ dues to post political advertising on websites in support of specific candidates, holding candidate rallies, and handing out campaign literature and signs. If the NEA has been doing these things and does them less, then Democratic candidates will be helped less. Of course, if some units of the NEA really have been doing those things with tax-exempt donaations, then they have been abusing their 501©(3) status.