IRS apologizes for targeting tea party groups

[TimothyC]

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER — May. 10 6:14 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. But that wasn't good enough for Republicans in Congress, who are conducting several investigations and asked for more.

"I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declared it was indeed inappropriate for the IRS to target tea party groups. But he brushed aside questions about whether the White House itself would investigate.

Instead, Carney said the administration expects a thorough investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. The inspector general has been looking into the issue since last summer, and his report is expected to come out next week, the IG's office said Friday.

Carney said he did not know when the White House first learned that tea party groups were being targeted.

Lerner acknowledged it was wrong for the agency to target groups based on political affiliation.

"That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. Agency officials found out about the practice last year and moved to correct it, the IRS said in a statement. The statement did not specify when officials found out.

About 75 groups were inappropriately targeted. None had their tax-exempt status revoked, Lerner said.

The IRS is an independent agency within the Treasury Department that enforces the nation's tax laws. Revelations that the agency was targeting political groups because they were affiliated with a movement that is critical of President Barack Obama could become a new headache for the White House.

"The admission by the Obama administration that the Internal Revenue Service targeted political opponents echoes some of the most shameful abuses of government power in 20th century American history," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Many conservative groups complained during the campaign that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.

The forms, which the groups have made available, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.

IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012 that the IRS was not targeting groups based on politics.

"There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman told a House Ways and Means subcommittee.

The IRS said senior leaders were not aware that specific groups were being targeted at the time of the hearing.

"While we acknowledged centralization of these applications last year, the IRS did not acknowledge the use of names as part of the process earlier because the details were not initially known to senior leadership and (the inspector general) has been reviewing the situation," the IRS said in a statement. "Their work is now far enough along that it was appropriate to address the issue when it came up during (Friday's) tax conference."

Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor. The agency is now being run by acting Commissioner Steven Miller.

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, requested a trove of documents from the IRS on Friday, including all communications containing the words "tea party" and "patriot."

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said Friday he will hold a hearing on the matter has not yet set a date.

"The IRS absolutely must be non-partisan in its enforcement of our tax laws," Camp said. "We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have also promised investigations.

Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley said the department will support the inspector general's investigation.

"The Treasury Department expects all individuals and organizations to be treated fairly by the IRS. Anything less is inappropriate and unacceptable."

There has been a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections — conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS, and the liberal Moveon.org.

These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities but their primary activity must be social welfare.

That determination is up to the IRS.

Lerner said the number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

Lerner said this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn't the group's primary activity.

As part of this process, agents in Cincinnati came up with a list of things to look for in an application. As part of the list, they included the words, "tea party" and "patriot," Lerner said.

"It's the line people that did it without talking to managers," Lerner told The AP. "They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents."

In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, Lerner said. Of those, about a quarter were singled out because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications.

The IRS statement said that once applications were chosen for review, they all "received the same, even-handed treatment."

Lerner said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.

"Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale," the IRS said in a statement. "We fixed the situation last year and have made significant progress in moving the centralized cases through our system."

"I don't think there's any question we were unfairly targeted," said Tom Zawistowski, who until recently was president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, an alliance of tea party groups in the state.

Zawistowski's group was among many conservative organizations that battled the IRS over what they saw as discriminatory treatment. The group first applied for nonprofit status in June 2009, and it was finally granted on Dec. 7, 2012, he said — one month after Election Day.

"It is suspicious that the activity of these 'low-level workers' was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred," said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which describes itself as the nation's largest tea party organization. "President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grass-roots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again."

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this report.

Do I think there was a conspiracy? No, but I think that it is a bad sign.

[Rogue 9]

A sign that what, they're suspicious that groups who chose the acronym of Taxed Enough Already as their name might not want to pay their taxes?

[TimothyC]

A sign that what, they're suspicious that groups who chose the acronym of Taxed Enough Already as their name might not want to pay their taxes?

That there were revenue agents that were targeting groups based on political affiliation. If it were left wing groups being targeted would you be so flippant?

[Rogue 9]

A sign that what, they're suspicious that groups who chose the acronym of Taxed Enough Already as their name might not want to pay their taxes?

That there were revenue agents that were targeting groups based on political affiliation. If it were left wing groups being targeted would you be so flippant?

I'm positively right-wing by board standards, as you should probably know if you've been around since 2005. If said left-wing groups were vocally against paying their taxes, yes, I would expect revenue agents to investigate them, since investigating people who don't pay their taxes is their job.

[Flagg]

They should audit every political group that raises funds for candidates every year. That said, this is pretty atrocious and people should be fired.

[SirNitram]

They should audit every political group that raises funds for candidates every year. That said, this is pretty atrocious and people should be fired.

Sadly, can't be done without sufficient employees. Guess what the anti-tax zealots have been chipping against?

This is a real faceplant, though. And they yet missed the many churches promoting candidates in direct violation of their tax-free status.

[Dominus Atheos]

I don't get this story. The Tea Party is a political organization and so shouldn't qualify for tax exempt status. The article mentions moveon.org and I don't think donations to them should be tax deductible either.

[RogueIce]

And they yet missed the many churches promoting candidates in direct violation of their tax-free status.

I've always figured they don't "miss" it so much as the IRS figures Congress and the White House would throw them to the wolves if they ever opened that can of worms.

How many times has the IRS managed to, or even seriously threatened, churches over promoting candidates?

[Flagg]

And they yet missed the many churches promoting candidates in direct violation of their tax-free status.

I've always figured they don't "miss" it so much as the IRS figures Congress and the White House would throw them to the wolves if they ever opened that can of worms.

How many times has the IRS managed to, or even seriously threatened, churches over promoting candidates?

Under Bush they went after a liberal California church that endorsed Kerry.

[Maraxus]

I don't get this story. The Tea Party is a political organization and so shouldn't qualify for tax exempt status. The article mentions moveon.org and I don't think donations to them should be tax deductible either.

A lot of these organizations file under 501(c)3 rules, which gives them tax-exempt status. They're not allowed to give cash to campaigns directly, but they are allowed to give money to issue advocacy groups and political action committees and the like. Frankly I'm not surprised that people in the IRS would go after organizations with "Tea Party" in their title, since they're used to funnel dark money to political campaigns without having to disclose their donors names or even the amounts they donate to different PACs.

501(c)3 definitions for what constitutes as "educational" can be very tenuous. My old Student Housing Cooperative qualified under 501(c)3 rules as well as their federal equivalent, and our connection to anything educational was fuzzy at best. Unless you count learning how to smoke a lot of weed and shake your fist at The Man as educational.

[Irbis]

That there were revenue agents that were targeting groups based on political affiliation. If it were left wing groups being targeted would you be so flippant?

Seeing these nuts should be the first ones investigated, not given apology, and other right wing groups (like Churches mentioned above) aren't investigated at all, let me play world's smallest violin in recognition of their plight

Speaking of left wing groups, these tend to actually follow the law. Oh, and I remember what IRS, FBI, and a lot of other arms of US government did to any left wing group that dared to utter forbidden word 'socialism' not for one election, but for decades. Did they ever get a single word of apology?

[Tiriol]

That there were revenue agents that were targeting groups based on political affiliation. If it were left wing groups being targeted would you be so flippant?

Seeing these nuts should be the first ones investigated, not given apology, and other right wing groups (like Churches mentioned above) aren't investigated at all, let me play world's smallest violin in recognition of their plight

Speaking of left wing groups, these tend to actually follow the law. Oh, and I remember what IRS, FBI, and a lot of other arms of US government did to any left wing group that dared to utter forbidden word 'socialism' not for one election, but for decades. Did they ever get a single word of apology?

The logic in this post isn't that strong. So because some political movements were not, in the past, given equal treatment and were specifically and maliciously targeted by authorities and were not apologized for it, there's no need to apologize if something like that happens today to some other group?

[Covenant]

I'm surprised none of them lost their tax exempt status, or were denied. Isn't it fairly clear that the Tea Party, a banner under which people ran in political elections, is a political organization? How is claiming to be a Tea Party group all that different from claiming to be a Green Party group, or Republican Party group, both of which also sound like political groups? Why wouldn't this be one of the major things you investigate to determine if a group is violating their status by being predominantly political?

I think the explosion of tax exempt status with a very "case by case" filing status basically means that this was bound to happen. Without a sweeping ruling, and so many tea party aspects explicitly political without a social welfare aspect any bigger than a mainstream party, I know I would have been focusing on the same kinds of people at the IRS did when looking for people exploiting their status to shield political activities. I'm not really all that upset because it sure sounds like these groups absolutely needed an additional look into, even if how they did it was unfortunate looking.

I mean, it's not like there was a corresponding left wing group that appeared overnight and started dramatically reshaping elections and raising tons of money. The tea party did, so yeah, it probably needed to be looked at.

[Havok]

Too bad GR wasn't here to shed some insight on this.

[Thanas]

....and now I feel sad.

[TimothyC]

Senior White House Officials Knew Of IRS Probe: Jay Carney
05/20/13 02:52 PM ET EDT

WASHINGTON -- The White House says White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was first informed about an audit of the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative groups on April 24 and that she notified senior staff, including Denis McDonough, the chief of staff to President Barack Obama. White House press secretary Jay Carney says Ruemmler "appropriately" decided not to tell Obama at the time because the audit was ongoing.

The audit by a Treasury Department inspector general found that IRS employees singled out groups with names like "tea party" and "patriots" for special scrutiny that delayed their applications for tax exempt status.

Carney said no one in the White House intervened in the inspector general's audit. He says Obama did not learn of the probe until there were news reports about it.

Carney noted that the practice by the IRS workers ended in May 2012.

Well, the staff is still covering for their boss.

[White Haven]

Okay, let me go out on a limb here. The number of political groups that should under any definition enjoy tax-exempt status: Zero. If you're funding the political process, pay tax or shut the fuck up. The IRS's resources are not infinite. Accordingly, while every last political organization attempting to claim tax-exempt status should be grilled until they can either be denied it under law or they can be mistaken for a well-done steak, organizations belonging to a political movement that is publicly anti-tax are, unsurprisingly, targeted for a greater portion of the IRS's non-infinite resources. This whole 'scandal' is about people being thrown under the bus for exercising insufficient subtlety and getting noticed, nothing more.

I can only hope that at some point in the future, political organizations will be properly taxed to the high heavens so that some good comes out of the vast ad buys. It's not as if they actually have any content worth the name as-is.

[Exonerate]

Am I the only one who is puzzled by why this is such a big fucking deal? I actually took the time to skim through the Inspector General's report, which stated that "...approximately one-third of the applications identified for processing by the team of specialists included Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names, while the remainder did not..." So, that's 2/3rds that weren't targeted based on those criteria - what the other criteria are, we don't know, but that's far from a damning indicator of political witchhunting. We don't know what the ratio of applications for tax exempt status from conservative groups to progressive groups is either; there's just not enough information to say conservative groups were targeted disproportionately. So conservative groups were targeted - ok yeah, I guess strictly speaking that's true because some of the groups targeted for conservative policy positions, but if you asked the question whether progressive groups were also targeted I'm willing to be the answer is also going to be "Yes". The IG's report is condemning the IRS for using the wrong criteria to determine whether politicking is a group's primary activity, not for targeting conservative groups over progressive ones. If you read the report you'll also note that the delays in processing and excessive intrusiveness were products of poor management and lack of guidance (Turns out the line between "political campaign intervention" and "social welfare" and whether such activities are "limited" or constitute the "primary activity" isn't so easy to draw!)

In a conference call with reporters last week, the IRS official responsible for granting tax-exempt status said that it was a mistake to subject Tea Party groups to additional scrutiny based solely on the organization's name. But she said ideology played no part in the process.

"The selection of these cases where they used the names was not a partisan selection," said Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations. She said progressive groups were also selected for greater scrutiny based on their names, but did not provide details. "I don't have them off the top of my head," she said.

As far as I can tell, half the reason this story has gotten legs is because Obama made the mistake of trying to reassure people partisan bias wouldn't be tolerated (even if it might not exist, he had to avoid the appearance of partisanship) by making a point of firing the head of the IRS, but it's being taken as as sign of weakness instead. As we get a clearer picture, I wouldn't be surprised to see if this was just another Benghazi.

[TimothyC]

Am I the only one who is puzzled by why this is such a big fucking deal?

The IRS selected groups for investigation based on their name, and then sent those groups questionnaires that exceeded what should have been asked.

Today (May 21) Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, admitted that individuals in Treasury and the White House knew the content of the IG report no later than the 24th of April and did not forward on any information to the President. The outgoing head of the IRS also knew about the investigation as it was ongoing in 2012, but did not forward that the IG investigation existed on to Congress, even after he had denied that the targeting of conservative political groups had ever happened.

As for why this is a big deal, the IRS has shown that with the current leadership it can not be trusted to remain politically impartial, something that is exemplified by the fact that 56% of the American people think that the IRS targetting was deliberate with only 31% thinking it was an honest administrative mistake (as found in the latest ABC-Washington Post poll).

[Terralthra]

Relevant:

An IREHR Special Report
While it is well-known that the so-called IRS scandal has been used by Tea Partiers to bash the IRS, less well known are the actual facts of the case.

Some of the flagged groups did have their tax-exempt status delayed or did face some additional scrutiny, but not a single group has been denied tax-exempt status.

A May 14 draft report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that none of the 296 questionable applicants had been denied, “For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles).” (p. 14)

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to recently have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan nature disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

The Inspector General’s report found that in the “majority of cases, we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of significant political campaign intervention.” (p. 10). In fact, only 91 of the 296, roughly 31%, of the applications reviewed for the report did not have “indications of significant political campaign intervention.” In other words, more than two thirds of those flagged for processing by a team of specialists had those indications.

IREHR Investigation Reveals Further Questionable Activity
That sort of political campaign intervention would normally disqualify a group from 501(c)(4) status, but the deluge of Tea Party applications combined with the politicization of the process has allowed them to slip through. A closer look by IREHR at the activities of some of the Tea Party groups that are currently under review or have received non-profit status from the IRS, reveals a difficult and dangerous situation.

The First Coast Tea Party Inc. of Jacksonville, Florida, for example, which applied for 501(c)(4) status in 2009 and received it in 2011. Commenting about the recent IRS controversy on Facebook, the group declared “We file a tax return, account for every penny.. We do not endorse candidates that is a no no.” Yet the group’s activities included public bragging about directly helping Republican campaigns. In an August 30, 2012 Facebook post, for instance, the group advertised a Jacksonville rally for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, adding, “bring your chairs and your signs, make sure they know that the First Coast Tea Party is and has been helping their campaign.”


Three weeks later the group declared a “state of emergency” on Facebook, pleading with supporters to campaign for Romney, “FLORIDA FRIENDS, IF YOU LIVE IN ANY OF THESE 3 COUNTIES GET OFF THE COUCH NOW, GET YOUR FRIENDS OFF THE COUCH. GET TO THE REPUBLICAN HEADQUARTERS AND OFFER AND THEN DO SOME WORK. PHONES, (YOU CAN EVEN DO THESE CALLS FROM HOME) AND WALK AND KNOCK. NOW. WE CANNOT LOSE FLORIDA TO OBAMA.. NOW. THIS IS MOST CRITICAL.” [Emphasis in Original] These weren’t posts from some random supporter on the group’s Facebook page, they were posts from the official account of the organization.

Similarly, the Louisville Tea Party was granted 501(c)(4) status in 2009. Nevertheless, it published a list of “officially tea party endorsed candidates for the 2011 Kentucky primary.” They also published an article "The Rationale for Romney-Ryan,” arguing for Tea Partiers to vote for the Republican candidate.



Then there’s the Katy Tea Party Patriots, which filed for 501(c)(4) non-profit status in 2009. This group actually ran an “Oust Obama 2012” campaign, organizing block-watching with the Fort Bend GOP, and phone-banking against Obama at GOP headquarters in Sugarland and Houston, Texas. Still featured on the frontpage of the group’s website at the time this article was written is an October 4, 2012 article entitled, “Our Country's Future” by Katy Tea Party Patriots President, Darcy Kahrhoff. She urged members to vote for Gov. Romney. "Please take time to talk with friends and family you may have living out of state, and try to convince them to vote for Governor Romney, especially if you have friends and family in Florida, Colorado, or Ohio. Also, find a Senatorial candidate to support in these states, and go to FreedomWorks to phone bank for these patriots. Everything you can do to help will matter. We can, and we must, win this!"

Not to be outdone, is the Central Valley Tea Party Inc. This regional California Tea Party group was granted the much more politically limiting IRS 501(c)(3) tax status back in 2009. It should be noted that this tax-status explicitly prohibits partisan political activity. According the IRS, “Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. The prohibition applies to all campaigns including campaigns at the federal, state and local level. Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

Despite this (c)(3) designation, the group appears to have been involved in partisan political activity. Currently, the frontpage of the group's website features "upcoming events" instructing members to "Volunteer for Measure G," and "Volunteer for Vidak for Senate.” In the latter case, the website simply tells members, "Please volunteer to do phone banking or precinct walking to help win the election."

Further stretching IRS regulations, the group’s newsletter endorsed and advertised conservative candidates. In an article in the October 2012 issue of the Central Valley Tea Party Times entitled, "Why You Should Be Excited to Vote for Mitt Romney," Paul Szopa told fellow Central Valley Tea Partiers to get out and campaign for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, "So it’s time to get excited to vote for the better candidate. It’s time to talk him up to friends and family. It’s time to join with groups like Operation Swing State (http://www.operationswingstate.org) and make calls in support of his candidacy." The group’s “Voter Guide” published on the front page of the newsletter is even less ambiguous, listing all the candidates that the group recommended as well as their positions on all of the ballot measures.



Issues of the publication even featured advertisements for conservative campaigns. The April-June 2012 edition of the Central Valley Tea Party Times features an advertisement for Whelan for Congress on page 27, another for Frank Bigelow for the 5th District California Assembly seat on page 38, and an ad "Elect Richard J. (Rick) Farinelli, Madera County Supervisor District III" on page 39. And the August-September 2010 edition of the Central Valley Tea Party Times features an ad for Diane Lenning a write-in candidate for CA state superintendent of Public Instruction. So does the October-November 2010 edition.

Another Tea Party group granted the 501(c)(3) non-profit status by the IRS, is the Tifton, Georgia-based Tiftarea Tea Party Patriots, Inc., which received the designation in 2010. The group also appears to have engaged in openly political activity, including publicly endorsing candidates. On October 9, 2012, in a post on the group’s website “Are you ready to vote?” the group offered up an endorsement for Romney, “The choice is simple. Obama has stated, He will transform America and acted to do such. Everything this Administration stands for, is Government and control of every aspect of life. This is the pipe dream of a Socialist’s mentality, for in their eyes, you the individual, do not know and cannot do, what is right, so someone else has to make decisions for you, to ensure, you do not make the wrong choices or actions. Or you chose Romney, who does not want to transform America, the greatest nation in history of human kind. He wants to allow, the individual, to have the right, to succeed and fail on his own regard, while ensuring those freedoms, given by our Creator and to assure those inalienable rights, written about in the Declaration of Independence are retained by their proper owners, ‘We the People.’”

These are but a few of the many examples of political intervention by Tea Party non-profits that IREHR has catalogued. There are many, many more. They’re not difficult to find. Rather than the so-called scandal cooked up by Tea Party groups, the real criticism of the IRS may be that it has let so many of these groups get away with what are apparently egregious violations.

After the firing of several high level IRS employees over this incident, how likely is it that Tea Party groups will be prevented these sorts of violations in the future?

My heart bleeds for the poor Tea Party groups who break the tax law, get questioned on it, and manage to hide behind accusations of partisanship instead of paying taxes.

[Starglider]

Okay, let me go out on a limb here. The number of political groups that should under any definition enjoy tax-exempt status: Zero.

On the contrary, why should any politicial group pay taxes? Their income is solely donnations, all subject to income tax; they don't produce anything (other than trivial merchandise), they shouldn't have significant surpluses, they don't pay dividends, they only exist to make it easier for numerous supporters to jointly pay for advertising etc. This is particularly relevant for the US which has a ridiculously convoluted and beurecratic tax reporting scheme which is onerous to impose on any organisation, never mind a small volunteer-run action group.

Political groups should not get the tax-deductible status that true charities get but they should definitely be exempt from commercial taxation regiemes.

Accordingly, while every last political organization attempting to claim tax-exempt status should be grilled until they can either be denied it under law or they can be mistaken for a well-done steak

A total waste of time and money for everyone involved.

I can only hope that at some point in the future, political organizations will be properly taxed to the high heavens so that some good comes out of the vast ad buys.

The income of the media organisation providing the ads is taxed.

[Irbis]

The logic in this post isn't that strong. So because some political movements were not, in the past, given equal treatment and were specifically and maliciously targeted by authorities and were not apologized for it, there's no need to apologize if something like that happens today to some other group?

Given group A was actually maliciously targeted and never got apology, much less reparations they deserved I really don't see why group B that was correctly investigated and got apology for pretty much nothing gets to complain about anything.

This image sums it pretty well:

The IRS selected groups for investigation based on their name, and then sent those groups questionnaires that exceeded what should have been asked.

Why I have a feeling that if words investigated were something like "Muslim", "Atheist" or "European" the very same right wing nutjobs protesting the investigation would instead erupt into standing ovation?

IREHR Investigation Reveals Further Questionable Activity
That sort of political campaign intervention would normally disqualify a group from 501(c)(4) status, but the deluge of Tea Party applications combined with the politicization of the process has allowed them to slip through. A closer look by IREHR at the activities of some of the Tea Party groups that are currently under review or have received non-profit status from the IRS, reveals a difficult and dangerous situation.

So, wait, what these guys do is actually illegal, but due to friends in high places they are not only allowed to continue instead of being shut down hard, and they actually got an apology someone bothered to look at law-breaking? Well, yet another proof how evil IRS and Commie-Muslim Obama administration are

On the contrary, why should any politicial group pay taxes?

How about identical reasons why we limit campaign donations - to not turn democracy into a farce where the richest buy elections. Donations from single person up to certain size could be tax-free, but anything above it should be taxed, for the exact same reason other vote-warping mechanisms are banned.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Just a slight update to the story. As predicted turns out that a lot of the "Smoking gun" information the right is using to "prove" this is all some Obama led witch hunt, turns out to be Totally False

White House records show former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman signed in for 11 visits, not 157 between 2009 and 2012 as claimed by the Daily Caller and Fox News, The Atlantic revealed.

Here’s a case where President Obama’s efforts toward transparency have greatly confused the pretend journalists hiding out at the propaganda machine known as The Daily Caller. The President opened up the White House visitor logs to the public. But The Daily Caller, which purports to be competent at covering the White House when they’re not heckling the President, thought those logs were something other than what they are. Thus, they concluded that they had found the smoking gun to tie Obama to the IRS “scandal” ala Nixon, except without the tapes and without any proof that these alleged meetings were about anything other than their stated purpose.

The Daily Caller’s absurd attempt to conclude “coordination“:

""Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.""


… But the scope of Shulman’s White House visits — which strongly suggests coordination by White House officials in the campaign against the president’s political opponents — is even more striking in comparison to the publicly recorded access of Cabinet members.
Of course, it’s hard to get proof of “coordination” when the meetings didn’t take place. It turns out that Garance Franke-Ruta, a rather industrious writer at The Atlantic, bothered to sift through all of the documents in order to determine that actually, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman signed in for 11 visits, not 157, between 2009 and 2012 (my bold):

The latest twist in the conservative effort to tie the IRS tax-exempt targeting scandal to the president is to focus on public visitor records released by the White House, in which former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman’s name appears 157 times between 2009 and 2012. Unfortunately, few of those pushing this line have bothered to read more than the topline of that public information. Bill O’Reilly on Thursday called them the “smoking gun” and demanded of Shulman, “You must explain under oath what you were doing at the White House on 157 separate occasions.” His statement built on a Daily Caller story, “IRS’s Shulman had more public White House visits than any Cabinet member.” An Investors Business Daily story and slew of blog items repeated the charges.
“The alibi the White House has wedded itself to is that it had to work closely with the IRS to implement ObamaCare,” the Investor’s Business Daily has written — as if that were not true.


“And yet the public meeting schedules available for review to any media outlet show that very thing: Shulman was cleared primarily to meet with administration staffers involved in implementation of the health-care reform bill,” Garance Franke-Ruta concludes (based on that pesky thing called actual evidence).

These logs were available to the Daily Caller, and IBD, and as Garance Franke-Ruta points out, the logs are a system for Secret Service and White House security, so if your name is on there, you were cleared for a visit. You may or may not have had a visit. That part is important, because that’s where the Daily Caller tripped on their efforts to provide Fox News with an anti-Obama headline they could jack up as the “smoking gun”. They were further tripped up by their lack of understanding regarding what the logs represent, yet they are a member of the White House press pool.

The Daily Caller also seems unaware that these logs were not made public by the Bush administration, so when they claim that Shulman’s predecessor only visited once, they are basing that on the opacity of the former administration rather than on facts. (But this is all about freedom and accountability, not about attacking Obama, even though Heritage directed Republicans to attack Obama rather than legislate.)

It’s just like The Daily Caller and Fox News to: a) not bother to read, b) assume that it’s fair game to conclude that what the visits say they were for is not actually what they are for, with no proof, c) to ignore the fact that the visits were cleared for policy discussions on healthcare at least 76% of the time and d) to accuse Obama of being Nixon, even though there is absolutely not one shred of evidence that the White House had anything to do with the IRS trying to determine who was scamming the IRS with fake nonprofits.

Republicans tout “True the Vote” as their ultimate victim of the IRS, but True the Vote was found by a judge to have acted illegally in aiding Republicans, among other ethical and legal issues.

The real IRS scandal is that nonprofits have been allowed to function as PACs, polluting our political system with dark money. The remedy to the IRS “scandal” is for there to be a zero tolerance rule for all nonprofits. But of course, Republicans don’t want that to happen, because they outspend liberals 34-1 trying to influence politics with their “nonprofits”.

The Right jumped the Nixon shark with this one. In Nixon’s case, there was an actual smoking gun in the form of tapes proving that he targeted his “enemies” out of revenge. On these tapes, Nixon directed aides to use the IRS to go after his enemies. That’s a far cry from claiming that a meeting with healthcare advisers was really a meeting about the IRS, and the Daily Caller can “prove” their fictional conspiracy because there were so many meetings– only there weren’t.

[Stark]

How about identical reasons why we limit campaign donations - to not turn democracy into a farce where the richest buy elections. Donations from single person up to certain size could be tax-free, but anything above it should be taxed, for the exact same reason other vote-warping mechanisms are banned.

Starglider specifically says that political groups shouldn't have the tax-exempt status of charities, which would make them a desirable place to give money. He simply thinks that since the money has already been taxed (and that specifically in the US the tax system is bullshit) that they shouldn't be taxed again. I might not agree, but if your country has problems with people 'buying elections', taxing their contributions probably isn't the best way to do this (and if it is especially onerous in paperwork, might be argued to reduce the ability for small organisations to participate, which actually strengthens the power of the groups it sought to weaken).

[Ritterin Sophia]

A sign that what, they're suspicious that groups who chose the acronym of Taxed Enough Already as their name might not want to pay their taxes?

That there were revenue agents that were targeting groups based on political affiliation. If it were left wing groups being targeted would you be so flippant?

Do you know what 501(c)4 means? Did you know that at least two dozen left wing groups were targeted?