OMB Watch: Arbitrariness Afflicts IRS Crackdown on Nonprofit Advocacy
09:00 AM Jul 08, 2006
Our friends at OMB Watch just issued a report that will be troubling to the many cause-oriented nonprofits in the DIA community, especially with election season approaching.
The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) new approach to enforcing the ban
on partisan activities by charities and religious organizations has
raised serious questions about the agency's interpretation of the law,
about evenhanded enforcement, and about the appropriateness of an
approach aimed at deterring speech.
The IRS has bared its teeth at a supposed epidemic of politicking by not-for-profit organizations, with the NAACP
the highest-profile target to date. Whatever one might think in
principle about what restrictions should attend the beneficence of tax
exemption, the actual standards at work are murky and their application
seemingly arbitrary ... with a frisson of the political dirty trickery so illustrious in the annals of Internal Revenue.