Let me first be clear I think this is unacceptable, but it did not happen in a vacuum. Chris Hayes did an excellent background on this IRS wrongdoing. The start of this goes back to the requirement the IRS has always had to ensure that organizations which take advantage of charitable tax exempt status are politically neutral. When SCOTUS ruled on Citizens United it changed everything. Groups like Karl Rove's claimed to be non political working for the public good by running political ads and enjoying tax exempt status at the same time. When Tea Party groups saw this there was a groundswell of politically motivated groups seeking tax exemptions. IRS personnel used the nefarious keywords "tea party" and "patriot" as ways to quickly identify these groups with questionable tax exempt credentials.
I have no idea why there wasn't an apparent similar effort to review any groups from the left. My guess is it was a volume issue, the vast majority of political groups seeking tax exempt status came from the far right.
Current Events » in reply to Playing politics with tax records
The reason this happened
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