Just follow what the law says on its face -- approve an entity "exclusively" for the enumerated purposes -- and there's no problem at all. None. Follow the law, and NO organization with the slightest whiff of political activity is eligible. Such organizations are, by definition, excluded.
So what went wrong? In 1959, for reasons that remain obscure, the IRS decided to issue regulations that contradicted "exclusivity." The exact, fundamentally irreconcilable language the IRS adopted by regulation (the statute remained unchanged) created an impossible quandary for a regulator: "An organization is operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare if it is primarily engaged in promoting in some way the common good and general welfare of the people of the community."
How can anyone square that circle? For some reason 501(c)(4) organizations remained non-controversial for more than fifty years. And the controversy arose ONLY because right-wing politically-engaged Tea Party groups in large numbers were trying to take advantage of a fundamental irrationality in tax regulations. There's a kind poetry in that, as these willful, would-be tax cheaters created an inflated, politicized, made-up problem that still obscures the real problem: trying to enforce incoherent law.
In June 2013, the Inspector General for Tax Administration, reported that, of the 5,000 or so relevant cases, the IRS identified 298 as "potential political cases," less than 6 per cent of all cases. And for all the accusations hurled by Tea Party groups and their allies about unfair treatment, in the end, none of their applications -- not a single one -- was denied 501(c)(4) status by the IRS. Further underlining the political speciousness of the right wing lie machine, IRS rules allow 501(c)(4) status to apply to anyone who CLAIMS it, whether they've applied yet or not.
Inspector general's behavior prompts call for investigation
Yes, the IRS inspector general identified 298 "political" cases (and a few others in grey areas) out of the 5000-plus reviewed -- but of those 298, the inspector general found only 96 identified by "Tea Party," "9/12," or "Patriots" but did not identify the names attached to the other 202 "political" cases, thus blurring the apparent reality that Tea Party type groups, despite the overt political nature of their names, still represented only a minority of the "political" applications reviewed. The facts seem to suggest some even-handedness by the IRS, whatever tactical clumsiness it may have had in engaging a standard that had no reliable meaning.
The suspicious sloppiness of the inspector general's report, which falsely fed the paranoid fantasies of the unpersecuted right, has contributed to a recently-filed ethics complaint against the inspector general himself. On February 5, two House Democrats -- Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania -- filed a 22-page complaint prompted by the inspector general's having briefed only Republicans on aspects of the Affordable Care Act, as well as the inspector general's numerous meetings with congressional staffers on Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's staff, meetings from which Democrats were excluded.
The inspector general, who is a Republican and a former congressional staffer, was criticized for the apparent bias of his report as soon as it was released. His report also omitted the fact that his staff had reviewed thousands of IRS emails and had found no hint of political motivation for the ISR procedures. Subsequent reports have reinforced the conclusion that the IRS did nor "target" or "single out" any particular political ideology in their efforts -- which ended up approving every application.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
