IRS targets tea Party groups regarding non-profit status.

Discussion in 'Elections' started by ceezmad, May 12, 2013.

  1. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Not sure what was the reason, Republicans will probably try to make it political.

    http://5newsonline.com/2013/05/11/source-irs-officials-knew-of-targeting-conservative-groups/


    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/irs-conservative-groups_n_3254180.html
     
  2. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Well,if said Tea Party groups were applying for the status of tax-exempt charities, then the IRS should apologize for NOT auditing them...

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...-targeting-tea-party.-Should-heads-roll-video

    After denying any such incidents ahead of last year’s election, IRS officials acknowledged and apologized Friday for letting it happen, in a Cincinnati field office. Workers there perused applications for “social welfare” designation, a tax-free status used by many super PACs because some political activity is allowed, targeting the words “patriot” and “tea party.”​


    So donations to a major (or even marginal) political party aren't tax deductible, but donations to Republican Field Turf organizations can be claimed as charity? That's the problem that needs to be addressed so that NO political organization (left, right, center) can claim it is a "social welfare" force.

    Oh, and I'll be curious to find out which outraged Republicans we'll be seeing were also actively involved in working to get ACORN defunded. But I guess that will be seen as a proper use of the Government to harass oversee monitor the activities of private citizens.
     
  3. Smurfquake

    Smurfquake Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 8, 2000
    San Carlos, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If the IRS employees were specifically picking on organizations with "patriot" or "tea party" in the name while ignoring similar applications from groups that weren't obviously right wing, that's a problem.
     
  4. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    No doubt partisans will try make it bigger than it is, but it's hard to imagine that it wasn't meant as a political attack. What else could it be?

    I'd think it was probably some overzealous low-level decision maker who's responsible, but it's still an embarrassment for the IRS if it's true. Assuming they were not the ones behind it -and I doubt very much that they were- I give the IRS top brass credit for bringing it to light and apologizing publicly instead of trying to cover it up, knowing that they are opening themselves to politically motivated criticism.
     
  5. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    The IRS has something like 60 years experience dealing with tax resistors who deny the legitimacy of the IRS. It would be surprising if a number of them did not involve themselves with the Tea Party movement; much as many "traditional" junkies grew their hair and started wearing tie-dyes and leathers in 1969.

    If an IRS administrator somewhere thought it worthwhile to look harder at Tea-flavored groups to see if any familiar names/ SSNs were involved I wouldn't argue with him or her.

    I don't know what it actually was-- but that is what else it could have been...
     
    Auriaprottu and Val1 repped this.
  6. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    And yet the IRS felt the need to apologize...
     
  7. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    Suggesting that what else it could have been was not in fact what it was...
     
  8. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    It's worse than just the Tea Party, per today's WSJ. The IRS targeted various conservative organizations.

    This is worse than Benghazi. Which of course is nothing, but this might be something.
     
  9. chad

    chad Member+

    Jun 24, 1999
    Manhattan Beach
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Oh my god look politics.
     
  10. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    The left would be pretty upset if the IRS under a GOP administration targeted lefty groups. I doubt that anybody would be talking impeachment, but it wouldn't be happy.
     
  11. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I agree, but (and I haven't read up extensively on this issue yet) I still say what I implied in my first post: A real scandal here is that overtly political organizations can structure themselves like a charitable organization and thus can be supported by tax-deductible donations. I don't care if it's the Tea Party or some OWS off-shoot or some church that campaigns from the pulpit (which my own has come dangerously close to doing in the past few years): I don't think that should be allowed
     
    GiuseppeSignori repped this.
  12. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Q*bert Jones III repped this.
  13. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    This "scandal" involves groups applying to be tax-exempt 501(c)(4) "social welfare organizations."
    Contributions to those organizations are not tax deductible; only contributions to 501(c)(3) "charitable" organizations are deductible.
    The tax exemption for social welfare organizations still provides some advantages.
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  14. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    I haven't either. I'm not saying it's a real scandal, just saying unlike Benghazi it's possible there's something there, so that's where I would go if I were looking to cause trouble.

    As for the other point, well yeah but it is what it is.
     
  15. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Maybe it shouldn't be allowed, that is a very valid point of view. But it's not the role of a low level decision maker at the enforcing arm of the IRS to target specific political groups based on that point of view. That's why I think the IRS saw the need to apologize for their actions.
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  16. ElJefe

    ElJefe Moderator
    Staff Member

    Feb 16, 1999
    Colorful Colorado
    Club:
    FC Dallas
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah, there's really no good spin for this. And given the current political climate, it is quite possibly the stupidest thing that could have been done.
     
  17. chad

    chad Member+

    Jun 24, 1999
    Manhattan Beach
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I agree that it was ill-advised. At the same time, though, the rightness/wrongness of it is rendered hilarious by the political tenor the GOP has established. "Only we get to do this stuff!!!"
     
  18. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    The second worst part about this is that it's going to give a false sense of legitimacy to the profoundly illegitimate Tea Party purse clutchers.

    The worst part is that it happened at all.
     
  19. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    Yeah I know, that makes me laugh.

    This will fuel hard-right conspiracy theories for generations. They were willing to believe anything of the IRS to start with. Now that anything looks to be true. Man are they going to run with this.
     
  20. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Slate.com talks w/ a target of the IRS

    Why I hate the IRS...

    Why wasn’t that controversial at the time? You could blame a pliant media, or you could point out that Democrats had been talking openly about the need to crack down on political groups that won 501(c)(4) status. In 2010 and 2012, the White House and Democratic groups warned voters that these groups were hoarding money from secret donors. Americans for Prosperity, chaired and funded to some degree by David Koch, won tax exemption in 2004 and went on to spend tens of millions of dollars on campaign ads. In their yearly reports, this wasn’t campaign money; it was money spent to “educate U.S. citizens about the impact of sound economy policy on the nation's economy and social structure.”

    The IRS didn’t investigate Americans for Prosperity. According to Politico’s Ken Vogel and Tarini Parti, it didn’t even call them.* Instead, it issued those letters to Tea Party groups. If there was a strategy, if the IRS was responding to calls from Democrats to crack down on nonprofit politics, it may have been to get at the big guys by nailing the pygmies. On Monday, AFP provided a redacted letter sent to one Tea Party group that asked (in Question 6) for copies of “any contracts” or “training material” the group had exchanged with the Koch’s Death Star.

    And that’s giving the IRS an awful lot of credit. The agency’s infamously better at nailing small-time scofflaws than nailing the ones that can hire top attorneys. Maybe it was just following the usual script. ...​


    And why I hate Tea Party ideology...

    "When the American people read the questions that were asked of these liberty groups," says Tom Zawistowski, "they will be outraged. They will bring up the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Those are the closest examples. That's how bad this is."


    But if being stupid enough to believe someone like Glenn Beck is worth drawing an audit, the IRS needs to be significantly bigger.
     
  21. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    American Brummie repped this.
  22. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Props to Obama for stepping up to the plate
     
  23. VFish

    VFish Member+

    Jan 7, 2001
    Atlanta, GA
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Yep, pretty ballsy to accept the resignation of a guy who was stepping down in a few weeks anyway.
     
  24. ChrisSSBB

    ChrisSSBB Member+

    Jun 22, 2005
    DE
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Saddest thing about this is that someone will want to make their mark by revising/amending the already insanely complex tax code to "keep this from happening again" which almost always comes with unintended consequences and often greater than initial problem.
     
  25. JohnR

    JohnR Member+

    Jun 23, 2000
    Chicago, IL
    The Nazis killed 6 million Poles. Stalin deported 1 million of them to Siberia. Dumb ******** doesn't even know his own ethnicity's history.
     

Share This Page