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Paul L. Caron
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Friday, April 29, 2016

The IRS Scandal, Day 1086

IRS Logo 2Wall Street Journal, House Republicans Seek to Block IRS Collection of Nonprofit Donor Data:

House Republicans are expanding their assault on the Internal Revenue Service, this time trying to prevent the agency from collecting information about nonprofit groups’ donors.

The latest effort, led by Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), would change a requirement that nonprofits list all donors who give at least $5,000. That information is supposed to be redacted from the publicly available versions of the groups’ tax forms, but the IRS has inadvertently released donor information about the National Organization for Marriage and a group tied to the Republican Governors Association.

To Mr. Roskam and other Republicans, those failures are a reason to keep clamping down on the agency. “The IRS has demonstrated inability to hold confidential information close, and if it’s not necessary for tax administration, then let’s mitigate this problem and not require organizations to submit it,” he said. The House Ways and Means Committee approved his measure Thursday on a 23-15 party-line vote. ...

The IRS is never popular, but Republicans have been particularly agitated about the tax agency since 2013, when it said it had improperly given extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. The agency’s leadership has since changed, but Republicans have maintained pressure and sought to limit its budget. ...

Under Mr. Roskam’s bill, nonprofits would only have to report information tied to certain tax shelters as well as donations from their directors, top employees and officers. The bill would also limit the information available to state charity regulators. A federal court last week ruled that California’s requirement to submit donor names to the state was unconstitutional.

Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at Louisiana State University, said the bill would make it harder for the IRS to police the line between charities and private foundations, the latter being subject to stricter rules. He said it might also be more difficult for the IRS to monitor self-dealing between a charity and its donors. “I think it’s problematic to not collect it, but I do respect the fact that there are some real disclosure issues that have been perennial,” Mr. Hackney said.

New York Times editorial, Dark Money and an I.R.S. Blindfold:

Under the proposal, the I.R.S. would no longer be told the identities of contributors to these nonprofits. Watchdog groups warn in a letter to the House that this would “open the door wide for secret, unaccountable money from foreign governments, foreign corporations and foreign individuals to be illegally laundered into federal elections.” The letter, signed by the Brennan Center for Justice, the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 and five other groups, stressed that the disclosure requirement is one of the few ways of guarding against foreigners influencing American elections.

Representative Peter Roskam, the bill’s sponsor, dismissed the reform groups’ warning, saying the I.R.S. “has a miserable track record when it comes to safeguarding sensitive data” and a history of targeting conservative nonprofits that are critical of administration policies. His office insisted that ending the disclosure requirement would not affect the foreign-donation ban, but the reform groups sensibly ask who else could monitor what has become a runaway system of big-money stealth politicking. ...

Amid fierce Republican criticism, the I.R.S. has grown ever more gun-shy about enforcement, with Tea Party and other right-wing groups accusing tax officials of bias in daring to investigate conservative “social welfare” claims. As I.R.S. wariness grows, so does the attraction of 501(c)s for donors more interested in stealth politicking than charity work. Enabling foreigners to join this dark money debacle would be disastrous.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/04/the-irs-scandal-day-1086.html

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