Government goes back to the drawing board on regulating controversial tax-exempt groups

[Judi Lynn]

May 22nd, 2014
06:08 PM ET
6 minutes ago

Government goes back to the drawing board on regulating controversial tax-exempt groups

Posted by
CNN Senior Producer Kevin Bohn

Washington (CNN) – The IRS and Treasury Department are starting over and will draw up new regulations regarding the controversial advocacy groups and how much politics they should be allowed to do and still keep their tax-exempt status.

After the government last November proposed new regulations for these groups, known by their tax status as 501c4s, the IRS received over 150,000 comments – the most ever received on a possible tax regulation change officials said.

“It is likely that we will make some changes to the proposed regulation in light of the comments we have received. Given the diversity of views expressed and the volume of substantive input, we have concluded that it would be more efficient and useful to hold a public hearing after we publish the revised proposed regulation. Treasury and the IRS remain committed to providing updated standards for tax-exemption that are fair, clear, and easier to administer,” the IRS and Treasury Department said Thursday in a joint statement.

Currently the law states for these groups to receive tax-exempt status they must “exclusively” push social welfare and that politics can’t be their primary purpose – which has been interpreted to mean these organizations can still do a lot of campaign work and not lose their status.

More:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/22/government-goes-back-to-the-drawing-board-on-regulating-controversial-tax-exempt-groups/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_politicalticker+%28Blog%3A+Political+Ticker%29

[blueridge3210]

1. How about "as long as you don't endorse any specific candidate you keep your tax exempt status"?

Take any proposal that you favor; put the other party in charge of all three branches of government and see if you still like it. If not, it's probably not a good idea to give anyone that much power. For a 501c4 group "tax-exempt" only applies to operating funds not being taxed as income; the donations are not a tax deduction for the donor.

[Fred Sanders]

3. My take is how about we enforce what exclusive and primarily mean?

[Fred Sanders]

2. The word "exclusively" would like to have its definition back from the IRS.

[former9thward]

5. The exclusive applies to 'social welfare'.

Politics is part of social welfare. Politics can't be primary but it is a subset of social welfare. If you believe politics is not part of social welfare then you must believe politics is destructive to society.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Take away the tax breaks, full disclosure of funding, let them say what they want?

[underpants]

4. That was the goal - weaken the IRS

Using pennies to protect the billions