Rick Cohen

More on IRS Investigations

There's no need to take a broad brush and question the entire tax exempt division of the Internal Revenue Service for politically motivated investigations of organizations such as Greenpeace. The Service actually employs very few direct political appointees. But there is continuing evidence of IRS investigations pursued due to complainants who seem to be as politically partisan as their complaints about the allegedly offending nonprofits.

Today's news is about one of the complaints about the NAACP, originating from a fundraiser for then Congressman, now Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. As a former director of the IRS's tax exempt unit noted, "It's clear that the NAACP drew a lot of criticism and complaints from the Republican Party and many of the complaints don't have a lot of substance to them. The circumstances of the (IRS) audit came just weeks before the election, and apparently they were triggered from members of the Republican Party at some level."

No one is going to sensibly argue that the IRS shouldn't do its job and enforce the laws pertaining to nonprofit ethics, accountability, and political nonpartisanship. But with the mounting evidence that at some times, the IRS has bent with the political winds, it doesn't inspire confidence. The IRS ought to clarify exactly what has been going in with the recent spate of Republican-instigated investigations of nonprofits for their allegedly politically partisan activities, which in the public reports of the NAACP's sitution and the Greenpeace case look rather innocuous, and make sure that the Service doesn't find itself manipulated into an equally inappropriate position of itself appearing partisan.

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Posted at 2:50 PM, May 18, 2006 in
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