Quote (JayKwik @ May 15 2013 03:07pm)
LOL Politico. In any event: Of course it's unjustified. It's not a political controversy, and the IRS isn't a political entity. Now that it's been reported that various "leftist" groups faced the same delay maybe the slow thinkers in the headnodding crowd will figure this out. If not, then hopefully someone will read the IG report to them very slowly.
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Here's the real problem with this entire episode: these groups should be flagged, they should face additional scrutiny, because they're guilty of tax fraud. While groups shouldn't be targeted because of political preference, if a group is stupid enough to put "Tea Party" in their name then they deserve to be flagged because as anyone that's familiar with 501c4's knows the most important rule created by the new tax laws is that the groups' primary focus must not be political, it must be promoting social welfare. The second-most important rule is that political expenditures must not exceed the 50% cap. Karl Rove didn't have half of his spending on "education," he assured his tax-exempt status for Crossroads when the IRS was completely overrun and made toothless (by his party of course) and then they went out last year and spent $100 million on attack ads. What the groups usually do to get around or through the cap rule is to dump a lot of their money on "consultants." Though the problem is that even when a group doesn't make the percentages work in accordance with the law, Rove's group being the best example, the agency is still too weak to do anything about it.
Rove's group is by no means committing tax fraud if they actually put 50% of their money into education. In reality, it doesn't matter what they are doing with the rest if they legitimately pay equal money for something else. Effectively, the cost of having a political 501(c)4 is to have to spend $2 for every $1 on politics, so if you pay that, it's allowed. You can rationalize all manner of apologetics as education, but that's the law -- if you want to donate $5k to a college for them to start a tea party student club, that's going to count, that's just the way it is, they knew this would happen when they passed the legislation. Amend it or there's nothing you can do -- overstepping these bounds is not permitted.
If someone can prove Crossroads didn't do this with their funds, then of course they'd be guilty, but we have no evidence of this.