
Perhaps
the biggest fiction of this past year was that the IRS's targeting of
conservative groups has been confronted, addressed and fixed. The
opposite is true. The White House has used the scandal as an excuse to
expand and formalize the abuse.
About a
month after the IRS inspector general released his bombshell report
about IRS targeting of conservative groups last May, Acting IRS
Commissioner
Danny Werfel
unveiled a "plan of action" for correcting the mess. One
highlight was that targeted groups would be offered a new optional
"expedited" process for getting 501(c)(4) status.
The
deal, which received little public attention, boiled down to this:
We'll do our job, the IRS said, if you give up your rights. Those taking
part in the "expedited" process had to agree to limit to 40% the amount
of spending and time (calculated by employee and volunteers hours) they
spend on political activity. Current 501(c)(4) rules allow political
spending up to 49%, and have no "time" component. The clear point of the
"deal" was to use the lure of 501(c)(4) approval to significantly
reduce the political activity of targeted conservative groups going
forward.
Some groups, desperate to get their tax
exemption, took the deal. Others refused to be victimized twice. One of
them is the Tea Party Patriots, run by
Jenny Beth Martin,
who told me that she didn't feel it was right that"every other
501(c)(4) would get to live under a different standard than those of us
who had been targeted, and had been waiting for a determination for
years." She let the deadline for using the expedited process pass.
Not
long after, the IRS was back hounding the Tea Party Patriots with new
requirements. In addition to re-demanding information that Ms. Martin's
group had already supplied, the IRS insisted on new details, like the
groups' fundraising letters from 2012.
Cleta Mitchell,
an attorney representing targeted groups, tells me one of her
clients suffered the same fate. The IRS called to ask if the group would
take part in its expedited process. When it turned down the IRS, the
government agency hit the group with new questions about its activities.
This all happened last summer.
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