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IRS Targeting: Round Two

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  • IRS Targeting: Round Two

    President Obama keeps claiming that he had no knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service's abusive muzzling of conservative groups. That line is hard to swallow given that his Treasury and IRS are back at it—this time in broad daylight.

    In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

    That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.

    "The committee has reviewed thousands of tax exempt applications," says House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp. "The new regulation so closely mirrors the abused tea-party group applications, it leads me to question if this new proposed regulation is simply another form of targeting."

    Here's how it works. To get or keep tax-exempt status, 501(c)(4) organizations must devote a majority of their work to their "primary" social-welfare purpose. Most tea party groups were set up with a primary purpose of educating Americans on pressing problems—the size of government, the erosion of the Constitution—and did so mainly via nonpartisan voter guides, speakers forums, pamphlets or voter-registration drives.

    What the proposed Treasury/IRS regulation would do is to re-categorize all these efforts as "political activity"—thereby making it all but impossible for tea party groups to qualify for 501(c)(4) status. Say an outfit's primary purpose is educating voters on our unsustainable debt, which it does mainly with a guide explaining the problem and politicians' voting records. Under the new rule, that guide is now "political activity" (rather than "social welfare"), which likely loses the group tax-exempt status.

    The rule, in other words, is not designed to provide helpful "guidance" on allowable activities. It was designed, rather, as Mr. Camp explains, "to put tea party groups out of business."

    What makes this targeting more obvious is that the Obama Treasury rule only applies to 501(c)(4) groups. The ultra-liberal League of Women Voters Education Fund is registered as a 501(c)(3)—one of those "charities" supposedly held to the strictest IRS standards on politicking. Yet it brags on its website that it holds "candidate debates and forums," and that its "educational activities" include "understanding candidate views and ballot initiatives."

    The League will continue to be able to do its voter guides and registrations and candidate forums. Yet under this new rule, any conservative social-welfare organization that attempts to do the same will likely lose its tax-exempt status. Nor does the new rule apply to the biggest spenders of all in politics—unions, which are registered as 501(c)(5)s. The only category muzzled is the one recently flooded by conservative groups that Democrats fear in the 2014 election.


    More at Link


    Democrat obsession over Citizens United continues.
    May we raise children who love the unloved things - the dandelion, the worm, the spiderlings.
    Children who sense the rose needs the thorn and run into rainswept days the same way they turn towards the sun...
    And when they're grown and someone has to speak for those who have no voice,
    may they draw upon that wilder bond, those days of tending tender things and be the one.

  • #2
    I am not surprised. Sadly.
    "Alexa, slaughter the fatted calf."

    Comment


    • #3
      I have trouble believing that only conservative groups are 501(c)(4) or that they can't
      transfer to 501(c)(3). I'm also not understanding why that woman's group is counted as a charity unless they're doing charitable deeds. Why can't tea party groups do that? No better way to win people over.

      Comment


      • #4
        More thug tactics from a thug administration. Everyone act surprised.
        It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
        In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
        Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
        Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

        Comment


        • #5
          You're all racists!! Just wanted to beat Bok & Norm to the punch.
          If it pays, it stays

          Comment


          • #6
            More government help = "social welfare" while less government control = "politics." The fix is in.
            "Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason, and so cannot be opposite to it."
            -John Locke

            "It's all been melded together into one giant, authoritarian, leftist scream."
            -Newman

            Comment


            • #7
              We've been repeatedly assured by people with an agenda the size of Jupiter that this is a phony scandal.

              Of course, these same people believe Obama is a good President, so take it for what it's worth.
              “I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
              I aim with my eye.

              "I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
              I shoot with my mind.

              "I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
              I kill with my heart.”

              The Gunslinger Creed, Stephen King, The Dark Tower

              Comment

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