Three questions I would like to ask the IRS
There are lots of questions swirling around the IRS right now, many people seem to be pretending that those questions already have answers but the truth is we really know very little about what is happening right now. We don't get to witness the backroom conversations that are being held at the IRS, we don't know all of the groups that were targeted and we don't know all the ways in which tax laws have been broken. There are lots of questions that need to be asked, but here are a few questions that I would like to have the IRS answer for me.
1. What social welfare activities are the Tea Party involved in that qualify them for tax exempt status?
This is a key question that has not been asked nearly enough and has certainly not been answered. If the Tea Party does not actually qualify for tax exempt status then I have a hard time understanding why nobody should scrutinize their tax exempt status. While 501c(4) organizations are allowed to participate in some political activity they are prohibited from making their political activity the primary focus of their organization, they are legally required to focus the bulk of their resources on social welfare action. If the Tea Party is able to claim tax exemption as a social welfare group then I would like to know what social welfare services they are providing.
2. Were there any left-leaning groups targeted by the IRS?
While this is a question that needs to be asked it is also a question that has already been at least been partially answered, we know the answer is yes we just don't know how many left leaning groups were targeted. Emerge America is a Democratic leaning group that was denied 501c(4) status on the basis of their political activity. We don't know at this point what other Democratic groups may have been targeted, but if the IRS felt they needed to come clean about their scrutiny of right-wing groups then I also would like them to come clean on their scrutiny of left-leaning groups. Which brings me to the next question.
3. In what way did Emerge America behave differently than the Tea Party groups which inspired the IRS to issue an apology to the Tea Party but not Emerge America?
If the IRS was scrutinizing at least one group on the left for the same reason they were scrutinizing the Tea Party then I think we deserve to know what this group did differently to make the IRS decide that they were not worthy of an apology but the Tea Party was.
These are just three of many questions that need to be answered. There is a scandal here, but I suspect the real scandal is far different than the scandal the media is portraying. What is happening is the wealthy are working to ensure that they can make tax exempt donations to buy off politicians. The 501c(4) groups are abusing the tax system and they are doing everything they can to convince us to look away from their abuses and instead pretend the real abuse is coming from the people investigating obvious tax cheats.
There is a story that needs to be told here, don't let the right-wing define the terms of what direction the coverage of this investigation takes.
