Stop bothering us with the facts.
Let’s follow this logic: In order for the targeting to be partisan, the applicants must have been associated with a party. If so, then they should not have been eligible for tax exempt status in the first place.
That might be going a bit too far (see the discussion above regarding 501©4 groups), but it doesn’t sound unreasonable to suppose that their eligibility for tax-exempt status might appropriately receive extra scrutiny, if only to make a determination that their partisanship did not compromise that eligibility.
So then if I discover an email in which a bunch of Republicans decided to target the Sierra Club for “partisan” reasons then that means the Sierra Club should immediately be stripped of its tax-exempt status?
I’m sorry but your statement makes no sense, lots of explicitly political groups are given tax exempt status. There’s nothing illegal about that.
And definitely stop bothering us with the clarifications posted in your own articles. Oh,wait, Magiver’s already stopped that. He inexplicably left off the IRS’s totally reasonable response to this bit of nitpickery.
Well, let me post the clarification:
There’s no smoking gun here. Everyone knows that the term “Tea Party” is partisan. The question is whether the people who used that term to search for nonprofits that might be problematic were doing so out of a genuine belief that such nonprofits were likelier to be problematic, or were doing so out of a partisan drive to punish political enemies.
Are you kidding? If the Daily Caller isn’t trying to smear the president with this, what’s the newsworthiness of this particular foundation?
That doesn’t make any sense. They were TRYING to unearth frauds when they were scrutinizing these new organizations. They did it in an unacceptable manner, but we’ve not seen one iota of evidence that they were doing anything but.
Tax exemption isn’t actually the issue here. The real benefit of a 501(c)(4) is not having to disclose one’s donors. Having said that, tax exemption for 501(c)(4)s is based on the premise that they are not primarily political advocacy groups.
On Monday’s Colbert Report, Trevor Potter explained that there is no law that requires (c)(4)s to register with the IRS in the first place. In effect, these applications are meaningless. So whatever liberal underlings at the IRS were behind any targeting completely shot themselves in the foot here; they weren’t preventing anyone from doing anything anyway.
Oh, I thought you were referring to my comments. Of course the right is trying to smear the president with this…just as the left would if it were a Republican in the White House. Are you shocked to find that there’s gambling in this casino?
It doesn’t look like they were trying to unearth any frauds. It looks like they were deliberately trying to slow down the approval of groups that have differing views from the administration until after the election. Asking a group about the content of their prayers, or demanding that board members of an organization sign a sworn declaration promising not to picket/protest Planned Parenthood, doesn’t exactly seem like the unearthing of fraud to me. Now, on the other hand, if they had bothered to look into the Barak H Obama foundation even slightly they may have noticed the original address was a rehab center.
Just curious, but you must have a cite for those, yes?
You misunderstand. I didn’t say they were immoral to try to smear the president with this, I said they were insane to do so. It has nothing at all to do with the president, and in the entire country, there are probably less than a dozen people whose minds will be changed by this faux scandal (referring specifically to the Barack H. Obama Foundation here).
See, to me it looks exactly as though they’re trying to unearth frauds. They’re trying to find groups that are primarily, not just slightly, partisan. And, lacking guidance from experts in the field, they’re making up their own criteria for finding such groups. They’re really bad at making up these criteria, but as I cited above, 2/3 of the groups they targeted weren’t conservative groups, so it’s not like they were explicitly out to get conservatives.
And even if they were, remember what they were doing:
-They were targeting groups because of an application the group didn’t need to file,
-Slowing the application down in a way that had literally zero effect.
It’s the single most incompetent bit of political sbotage I’ve ever heard of.
uh no, it doesn’t work that way. No rules were broken by the applicants. their applications were deliberately sought out and delayed. You can’t target someone who disagrees with you politically. This is what was done and ADMITTED TO by an IRS Commissioner. Which is what I cited.
Huh?
An organization that fails to register as a 501(c)(4) is not exempt from the requirement to disclose their donors. See 26 U.S.C. §§ 6104(b), (d)(3).
In what way do you mean these applications are meaningless? Without the application, the group does not enjoy the full benefits the law allows 501(c)(4) organizations.
If the applicants used tax free donations to support particular candidates or parties then they were breaking the law. If they were not supporting particular candidates or parties then it makes no sense, and can literally not be true, that they were targeted for partisan reasons. The questioner trying to put words in the mouth of the former IRS commissioner was using the word “partisan” for a particular reason as partisan activities are not allowed during work hours of Federal employees.
On the other hand, the workers may have assumed, like I would, that any application from the Tea Party is probably full of lies. Not good, but not partisan.
Thats the beauty of it all, you or I could conclude that the Tea Party application, or The Barack H Obama application or the United Methodist Churchers or the Family Planning Organization or whomever is full of lies, but they cannot.
If you fail to recognize the difference then I can not help you further.
That’s just what Colbert’s lawyer said. I dunno what he meant.
In any case, a small request: when you reference a law, would you mind quoting the relevant part? It makes it easier to follow your argument.
Here’s the best I can do at figuring out what you’re talking about:
The section 501 (d) appears to be this:
I’m not seeing how these quotes apply–did I find the wrong ones, or am I misunderstanding your claim?
This is completely untrue, fumster. I really want Democrats to win local elections, and I know that a lot of veterans vote Republican, and a lot of veterans live in my town because of the VA hospital here. If I start using my public office to shut down the VA hospital, I’m targeting it for partisan reasons (my reasons) despite the fact that the VA hospital isn’t partisan.
Similarly, the Tea Party groups might advocate for a strict reading of the Constitution, for example, and I fear that if their view gains public acceptance, Obamacare might be overturned. Their constitutional philosophy isn’t partisan, even if it’s totally wrongheaded, but my desire to defend Obamacare is.
The neat little logical tautology you’ve described is based on an equivocation of the word “partisan.”
You’re citing a comedy show? Really?
How do you figure the IRS wasn’t preventing someone from tax exempt status?
Colbert is a comedian, yes, but he’s a pretty wonderful kind. That episode was part of a long-running schtick with him, wherein he calls on Trevor Potter, ex-chair of the FEC, to explain election laws. It wasn’t Colbert who said that the application was unnecessary: it was the ex-chair of the FEC. Their role is Colbert as clown, Potter as straight man, and it’s definitely the use of comedy as education.
What part of the statement made by the IRS Commissioner are you having problems breaking down?
At any rate, these events have not affected Obama’s popularity.
and how exactly do you qualify for tax exemption without IRS approval? I belong to a 501 c group and would like to know why we waste time filling out forms when all we needed was a letterhead. You can cite Potter if he breaks it down.