Valin Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 The New Republic: The IRS fiasco shows that conservatives can be PC too NOAM SCHEIBER 5/15/13 Democrats can’t say it; Barack Obama can’t say it; and the IRS certainly can’t say it, so here goes: The only real sin the IRS committed in its ostensible targeting of conservatives is the sin of political incorrectness—that is, of not pretending it needed to vet all the new groups that wanted tax-exempt status, even though it mostly just needed to vet right-wing groups. How do we know this? Because, for one thing, the people submitting the questionable applications were overwhelmingly right-wingers. As others have pointed out, the early Obama era was a boom time for conservative activists, who were forming groups faster than NBC burns through “Today Show” hosts. This coincided with a series of court rulings that made it possible for these groups to claim tax-exempt status without disclosing their donors under section 501c4 of the tax code.1 As a result, there were suddenly way more non-disclosing political groups trying to claim tax-exempt status than there ever had been, and the vast majority were right-leaning. No surprise, then, that the IRS would focus on whether these groups actually qualified for that status—something that was questionable since the law said their primary activity needed to be “social welfare,” not politicking. But, in fact, the IRS’s great conservative crackdown is even more innocent than that. It turns out that the applications the conservative groups submitted to the IRS—the ones the agency subsequently combed over, provoking nonstop howling—were unnecessary. The IRS doesn’t require so-called 501c4 organizations to apply for tax-exempt status. If anyone wants to start a social welfare group, they can just do it, then submit the corresponding tax return (form 990) at the end of the year. To be sure, the IRS certainly allows groups to apply for tax-exempt status if they want to make their status official. But the application is completely voluntary, making it a strange basis for an alleged witch hunt. (Snip) --------------------------------------------------------- Yes at this point your head should be hurting...real bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted May 16, 2013 Author Share Posted May 16, 2013 The New Republic: Hey, didn’t Tea Parties kinda bring this on themselves by trying really hard to follow the law? Mary Katharine Ham May 15, 2013 The IRS itself admitted wrongdoing, and President Obama declared today, “it should not matter what political stripe you’re from — the fact of the matter is, is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.” But that doesn’t mean there’s no one willing to defend the IRS. First, there was the Jeffrey Toobin model, which argued, Hey, these guys were kind of trying to game the system because they’re not really “social welfare” groups, and sure the rules should have been applied equally, but the “real scandal” is that these tiny Tea Party groups and their unidentified donors are allowed to distort the democratic system! More on this notion in a moment. The New Republic goes a little more audacious in its take on this “trumped-up scandal.” According to Noam Scheiber, the persecution of the Tea Party was caused by the Tea Party’s persecution complex. Their silly paranoia about the government was a self-fulfilling prophecy, you see, inexorably pulling the IRS into the unfortunate optics of the current situation by their perfectly logical profiling of conservative groups. (Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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