Considering the political aspects of this, I think this is probably better suited to GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yup, I checked with mom, these letters are part of a prebuilt “build a letter” system, an IRS employee does not just write them on their own, the content of this letter has already been built into the system and reviewed by tax law types. Her only other comment was, is it a bunch of them or just this one. It could very well be that the people setting up this org have a history of previous justified audits, unpaid taxes, previous fraudulent activity, or other things that may flag not the organization but the individuals making the request for NPO status.
I think the whole thing is unfortunate because I think the IRS should be scrutinizing the 503© applications of political groups. Obviously, it’s a free country and anyone should be able to start such a group if they like, but if they want tax-exempt status, the IRS can and should verify whether the group meets the requirements. Now as a result of this situation, my guess is the IRS is going to give a pass to groups that deserve scrutiny.
If the concern is that the applicant is really a political body applying for charitable status, all of those items are potentially relevant.
Web-pages and social media sites are likely the best source to determine how the organization is presenting itself to the public at large. How does it solicit funds? How does it say it will use those funds?
Two extreme examples:
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if on the one hand, the group tells the public it will use the funds solely to develop education modules on the federal taxation powers, in collaboration with well-known and respected historians and legal academics, for free use in public schools, that sounds pretty much like a charity; education of the young is one of the traditional definitions of a charity.
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if on the other hand, the group tells the public that it will use all funds to make donations to politicians who take a limited view of the federal taxation power and pledge to vote for lower taxes, that is pretty much the definition of a non-charitable purpose.
Using the applicant’s own public statements in this way strikes me as highly reasonable: rely on their own words as one of the factors to assess if they are in fact a charity.
Similar for the contracts. If the applicant rents space at a university (for instance), shares administrative costs with other charitable bodies to maximise the funds available for its activities, and generally is tied in with other charitable bodies, that may be a good indication that it is also a charity.
However, if it’s renting space from a local political party, and getting free/low-cost administrative supports from a PAC, that’s a good indication that its real goal is political activity.
And yes, these are far-reaching requests, but it is the applicant who is requesting charitable status, which relieves it of tax obligations and entitles it to issue charitable receipts which give donors a tax benefit. Some heightened scrutiny is appropriate in such cases.
Of course, the underlying premise must be that these types of data requests and tests are applied uniformly, to all applicants for charitable status, not just to those of one political stripe.
The director of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee. As far as I can tell, everyone else involved is a civil servant, not a political appointee. And the people who did this were the people who’s job it is to figure out which 501(c) applications need extra scrutiny.
I’d imagine that the IRS workers responsible are probably overwhelmingly Democrats, and seem not to be the brightest people on earth if they didn’t at least notice that this would look really really bad.
Looks like it’s time for another round of IRS reform. Keep on weakening the agency until they learn.
To respond to the apologist remarks that perhaps political organisations need to be more carefully scrutinized by the IRS: if this is the case, then they will be able to show that they were equally tough on left-leaning organisations like moveon and their ilk. As of yet, I have not heard anything along these lines from the media.
If MoveOn applied for 501(c)(3) status, then apparently the IRS was appropriately tough on them since MoveOn does not have 501(c)(3) status.
so little real information.
The IRS is doing what they are supposed to do, according to the laws enacted by congress to govern the activities of the IRS.
All those politicians, including Obama, who jump to a conclusion that someone at the IRS is unfairly targeting applications for tax free status from only people who CALL THEMSELVES Tea Party, are idiots.
If congress doesn’t want the IRS to audit such applications, they need to pass the law saying, “No application for tax free status may be denied. If the organization obtains tax free status and then abuses it, the Federal prosecutor for their district shall present evidence and bring charges, allowing the government to seize all assets of everyone in the organization or who has been in the organization.”
Doug Shulman, the person in charge of the IRS at the time of this “scandal” was a Bush political appointee. Would you like to continue howling, Wolfman?
… and I’m sure you could find at least one janitor there who voted for Romney. Therefore, all bases are covered and it was pure accident that it was done and covered up for a year or so. :dubious:
Yes..AG Holder says that "he had no “DIRECT” involvement..does this mean that he might have had some “indirect involvement”?
Of course this is the same thing because janitors create and enforce policy at the IRS, and yargle blargle nixon benghazi death panel.
Just asking: can we rule that out at this point?
Now we’re hearing that the agency shared pending applications from conservative groups with ProPublica, after telling Congress that they’re confidential. Christmas in May for Darrell Issa.
This.
No, I don’t think Obama told the IRS to do this. I do, however, think it’s likely that a bunch of liberals thought it would be good fun to use their day job at the IRS to harass the hell out of right-wingers:
from http://washingtonexaminer.com/tim-carney-the-irs-is-deeply-political-and-very-democratic/article/2529758
Which is dumb. Assuming malice is stupid if you require a group. It requires a conspiracy. A conspiracy that would not have survived this long.
It makes far more sense that they didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong. And I’m still not sure they did, frankly. There should have been increased scrutiny on SuperPAC claimants. And, while I’m not the most politically astute person, I knew of maybe 2 liberal SuperPACs (not counting Colbert’s) and a ton of conservative ones. By random chance conservative ones would be targeted first, even.
Granted, I now know there are a lot more, but I’m not convinced that that many liberal SuperPACs would try these shenanigans, if only because we don’t have a history of hating taxes.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but there were no shenanigans by the conservative groups in question; all the requests for tax-exempt status ended up being granted.
The ones that went through the entire painful and expensive process. Many disbanded. Those that did are likely to sue.
Right, so the defense that “Of course these conservative types need extra scrutiny, they’re likely to cheat the IRS” seems to fall flat, in light of the fact that none of the groups in question were actually denied.