[EL] big IRS story

[Trevor Potter]

As far as we can tell, the IRS apologized because these agents picked out "political names" belonging to only conservative groups for more careful review--they did not similarly examine the applications for liberal-sounding groups. If that is what happened, then that is obviously an abuse of power and a violation of IRS standards. The point I was making is not that what they did was "innocuous" but rather that looking closely at groups applying for c4 status that have apparently political names is part of standard IRS review of such applications--but only if done on a non-partisan basis, which we are told they did not do here.


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Maurer [mailto:wmaurer at ij.org]
Sent: Fri 5/10/2013 6:34 PM
To: Trevor Potter; Joe La Rue
Cc: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] big IRS story
 
If what happened is innocuous and appropriate, why did the IRS apologize?  I'm unfamiliar with government agencies routinely apologizing, much less apologizing if they haven't done anything wrong.

Bill

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Trevor Potter
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 3:30 PM
To: Joe La Rue
Cc: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] big IRS story

To remind everyone of what we know at this point, applications for 501 c4 social welfare status were being flagged for review by IRS staffers if they had words in their title that suggested the organizations were political in nature-- ie that their major purpose was to engage in political activity and therefore they should be registered as a 527 rather than a c4. That is one of the IRS's jobs-- to determine whether a group qualifies for c4 status, or is too "political" in purpose to do so. Based on recent cases, the IRS has certainly questioned/ challenged the appropriateness of c4 status of groups with both "Democrat" and " Republican" in their name.

Trevor Potter

Sent from my iPhone

On May 10, 2013, at 6:22 PM, "Joe La Rue" <joseph.e.larue at gmail.com<mailto:joseph.e.larue at gmail.com>> wrote:
The anger should be there, regardless. NOBODY should be targeted by the IRS because of his or her political views. It doesn't matter to me whether they are targeting conservatives only, liberals only, or conservatives AND liberals together. And it shouldn't matter to anyone else who claims to love freedom. If the government can target us because of our political views, and can subject us to extra scrutiny and make us jump through extensive hoops because of we have political views, then what have we become?


Joe
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On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Byron Tau <btau at politico.com<mailto:btau at politico.com>> wrote:
I think the anger comes from the fact that they were just flagging conservative-linked words. If the list also included "progressive" and "liberal," I don't think the anger would be there.
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On May 10, 2013, at 6:03 PM, "john.k.tanner at gmail.com<mailto:john.k.tanner at gmail.com>" <john.k.tanner at gmail.com<mailto:john.k.tanner at gmail.com>> wrote:
Both are common adjectives for advocacy groups as well as the names of political parties.   ADA, SDS, ....
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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Schmitt <schmitt.mark at gmail.com<mailto:schmitt.mark at gmail.com>>
Sender: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 17:47:50
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Subject: Re: [EL] big IRS story

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