On the Recent IRS "Scandal"

OK, now I know many people will just say that I am being totally partisan about this issue, and maybe I am, but I really don't see what the big deal is about the IRS looking more closely into non-profit applications for certain groups.

Seriously, if you are applying for tax-exempt status as a "social welfare" organization, during an election year, and you have the name of your political party listed in your application, or even worse, as a part of your organization's name...You should be looked into more carefully! Any auditor worth their salary, would be totally remiss in their duties if they didn't scrutinize a tax exempt application that has the name of a political party as a part of the applicant organization's name.

Granted, having a name like "Tea Partiers for a Better America" does not necessarily mean that you ARE a political organization, but if I were an auditor, I would certainly pull this name out of the stack as having the potential to be politically motivated. I would also do this if the name was "Republicans for a Better America" or "Democrats for a Better America". If you really think about it, anytime you place a politically tied word into your organization's name, you are asking for the IRS to closely scrutinize your "social welfare organization" status.

Now, some of you may be thinking, "Yeah, but the problem is that they ONLY targeted Tea Party groups and not others", except that these groups were not the only ones targeted. Tea Party named groups made up only about 75 of the 300 applications flagged for higher scrutiny, there were also liberal and conservative groups flagged for this same scrutiny, and NONE of the 75 tea party applications ended up being turned down.

When it's all said and done, while some people may understandably not like the fact that they were flagged for extra scrutiny by the IRS (who would like this?) I think that if you are dumb enough to put your political affiliation in your organization's name, then you kind of just got what you asked for.



As always, there's a sorce link to get you started on fact checking my post: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/13/irs-tea-party-scandal-explained/2156009/