[EL] IRS releases confidential taxpayer information -> a felony (but if it's Crossroads is that ok?)

[bzall at aol.com]

As Rick would say (and should have said): "Wow!"



So the IRS gets a FOIA request for Crossroads GPS's 1024. If the application had been granted, that 1024 would have been public information. But the application has not been granted, so the 1024 is still, by law, "confidential taxpayer information." Which makes the disclosure, no matter how interesting to various people, a felony under IRC 6103. There's no exception for FOIA, and no reasonable explanation for how this happened. And there's no exception for revealing information that some people really, really want to know about groups that they don't like. In fact, courts have held that releasing information to people who might want to cause harm is an aggravating factor in the calculation of proximate cause. Jones v. U.S., 9 F.Supp.2d 1119, 1143-44 (D.Neb. 1998). 


And, for those who think, "Oh, it's just some IRS munchkin who made a stupid mistake," unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. I heard today from counsel for three other conservative organizations who received calls from the IRS saying that the organizations' 1024s "may" also have been erroneously released, though no details were given. Probably a 7431 lawsuit is in order, with at least discovery for what happened and possibly civil damages. 


Sounds like something even disclosure proponents should want investigated. Doesn't matter how "bad" an organization is, releasing information protected by statute should be condemned, not celebrated. 


And, of course, the ProPublica analysis of the "limited" amount of spending on political activity is just ignorant at best. All the response to that question says is that the applicant won't let political activity be its primary activity, which is all the law requires. We can argue about what's "political" or not, but the existence of that dispute is not enough to outweigh felonious disclosure. 



“Karl Rove’s Dark Money Group Promised IRS It Would Spend ‘Limited’ Money on Elections”
Posted on December 17, 2012 10:39 am by Rick Hasen

ProPublica reports.





Barnaby Zall 
Of Counsel 
Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP 
10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 500
Bethesda, MD 20817
301-231-6943 (direct dial) 
bzall at aol.com 
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