Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties?
by Colleen Owens 2-27-12 [full post in case it gets shut down]
In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various
local Tea Parties across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have
reached Tea Parties in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas (we are hearing of more daily). There are several
common threads to these letters: all are requesting more information from these independent Tea Parties
in regard to their nonprofit 501(c)(4) applications (for this type of nonprofit, donations are not
deductible). While some of the requests are reasonable, much of them are strikingly onerous and, dare I
say, Orwellian in nature.
What are local Tea Partiers to think with requests like “Please identify your volunteers” or “are there board
members or officers who have run or will run for office (including relatives)”? What possible reason would
the IRS have for Tea Parties to “name your donors” when said donations are non-deductible? These are
just a few of the questions asked by the IRS in these letters, and one cannot help but suspect an intrinsic
threat encompassing all these demands.
The other question is the timing of these IRS letters requesting reams of copies and hundreds of hours of
work and potentially thousands of dollars in accounting/legal fees (all due in two weeks). Some of these
Tea Party groups have not received anything concerning their nonprofit status since 2010 prior to these
letters.
These documents are further undermined by a letter sent to the IRS Commissioner Shulman. Signed by six
Senators, it requests that the commissioner investigate 501(c)(4) groups to determine whether they are
engaging in substantial campaign activity, including opposition to any candidate. Who signed this letter?
Senators Schumer, Franken, Udall, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Merkley and Bennet — all Democrats.
Could it be that these Senators want the IRS to investigate the nonprofit status of Media Matters and its
coordinated political activity with the White House? Or perhaps they are concerned with nonprofit ACORN
groupsʼ record of voter fraud, and other previous campaign abuses including alleged close ties with
President Obamaʼs Project Vote? No, when these Senators sent this letter to the IRS commissioner, the
message would be very clear. The 501(c)(4) groups they want investigated are not those with Democratic
liberal ties.
But why would a department like the IRS cave to Democrat demands? Could it be because this Democratic
administration proposed a budget earlier this month that would result in “$1.1 billion in new funds for
the Internal Revenue Service… that would translate to 5,112 new hires, or a 5 percent expansion of
enforcement operations”? Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, couldnʼt
contain her glee at the prospect of over 5,000 new union hires, exclaiming in response to the
announcement that “the administrationʼs 2012 funding level for the IRS would permit the agency to
improve services through increasing response rates to inquiries, deploying enforcement resources to
what the White House called high-return integrity activities and by modernizing information technology
systems.”
The IRS is already focusing on “deploying enforcement resources,” as Kelley put it, toward targeting small,
local Tea Parties; weʼre sorry to report that these “high-return integrity activities” are generating a higher
fear factor, not necessarily higher returns.
In the near future, the Affordable Healthcare Act mandate and all things related to healthcare are to be
policed and enforced by the IRS. This means thousands more IRS agents will be added, but the actual
number is yet unknown. Considering that healthcare accounts for 1/6th of the U.S. economy, it will
probably be a significant number of additional agents. According to the tax administration inspector
general, Russell George, “The new Affordable Care Act provisions represents the largest set of tax law
changes in 20 years.” Thatʼs an overwhelming thought considering there are over 70,000 pages of federal
tax code.
The Tea Party movement is well known for wanting to shrink the size of government and decrease
government spending because of the ballooning deficit. This means that unionized government
employees that may be out of a job if the Tea Party is successful also have the power to choose whether or
not Tea Party groups get nonprofit status. And those same employees are also requesting names and
information of board members, volunteers, donors, invited speakers(and party affiliation) and just about
anyone that has had any association with the Tea Party.
It is apparent that there is a potential conflict of interest and it could be used to stifle the right to free
speech of the Tea Party members, or any other citizen willing to question the system and powers that be.
Many Tea Party boards are afraid to speak out publicly about these intrusive requests because of fear of
being personally targeted and singled out by the IRS. This is especially scary to citizens of modest
incomes that donʼt have the financial means to hire accountants or tax attorneys. And that is probably the
point. Cower and fade away, or face possible persecution at the hands of government bureaucrats.
Some people may read this article about this possibly-coordinated effort against Tea Parties and be glad.
But, the tables can easily be turned if and when another party takes control. The potential of using the IRS
as a weapon against those that disagree with the people in power is exactly why the Tea Party fears the
growth of government.
If your Tea Party has received similar letters, please let me know (Colleen Owens, citizenczar@gmail.com)
and I will put you in contact with other Tea Parties that have also received them. I will not publish your
Tea Party or names publicly.
Remember the words of Ben Franklin, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang
separately.”
No comments:
Post a Comment