
IRS targeted groups critical of government - sinnerswing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/irs-targeted-groups-critical-of-government-documents-from-agency-probe-show/2013/05/12/bb38e5bc-bb24-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html?hpid=z1
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belorn
Quite often when privacy is discussed, some people ask why we need privacy.
Some then continues on and say that its already lost and what ever harm is
done and are things we need to live with.

Well, this is the harm. Selective use of government "scrutiny" against those
that are perceive as a threat. The only positive side of this news is that
they haven't gone very far. String search of groups names feels very much like
how block filters worked before deep-packet inspection. With the social
graphs[1] already in existence, this type of targeting could be made very
efficient and only requires the sharing of data between different government
branches.

[https://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2012/freedom-to-
conne...](https://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2012/freedom-to-
connect_moglen-keynote-2012.html)

~~~
mrtksn
Very well said. In my not-so-democratic home country, in many businesses the
norm of doing business is not strictly by the law and the government turns
blind eye on this as long as you play the ball. Whenever somebody upsets
somebody in power, the might of the legal system crushes them without touching
their cooperating competitors. It is completely legal way to silence anybody
who you don't like that much. The non-profits are even more exposed.

We even have a mayor who tried to demolish the campus of a prestigious
university that issued reports about contamination in the drinking water,
putting political pressure on the mayor. After some media circus(the mayor
sent bogus samples to be analyzed but when university took the samples by
itself, the results were much different), somehow he found an irregularity in
the papers of the buildings and issued an order to for demolishing the 60
years old, architecture awards winning campus. Thankfully the court decided
that destroying the university was not in benefit of the society and blocked
the order.

I have to note that this happened in the capital of the country, the
irregularity was that the drawings were not in the exact same scale that the
town required and somehow the legal system proceeded so quickly when lagging
for years to prosecute many scandalous building projects of some friendly
businessmen.

------
pekk
Not accurate. This was politically self-defeating (for the IRS personnel
concerned, in that period in Ohio) but it wasn't Orwellian. These groups are
anti-tax, associated with the Sovereign Citizens movement, and also applying
for a nonprofit status that legally constrains political activities that these
were likely to engage in. And in the end, they all got their nonprofit status
anyhow. So the screaming about how they were picked on is really disingenuous.

Tax collection is a necessity for every first world country and unfortunately
that means not taking every application for a nonprofit status at face value.

~~~
brownbat
Moreover, it was also a decision at the staffer level that was corrected by
superiors as soon as they found out about it, ie, before it had any meaningful
impact.

Fixing things before they break... puts them one up on the banking sector by
my count.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...was corrected by superiors as soon as they found out about it...puts them
one up on the banking sector..._

The staffers involved were fired and forever barred from working as government
bureaucrats again?

(FYI, that is typically what happens at a bank if compliance catches someone
deliberately misusing client information.)

------
DanielBMarkham
One of the aspects of this that is completely unreported is the fact that in
2008, Congress gave the IRS sweeping new investigative powers.
[http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2013...](http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2013/05/09/next-target-of-irs-robo-audits-small-business)

This allows them to do thing like pull all your emails and social activity
simply on suspicion of doing anything wrong -- if you are flagged for any
reason (as in this article) These processes are being automated.

This means that it is possible, but currently unlikely, that whoever flagged
these groups could have then automatically pulled down all the email and
social networking chatter of the organizers behind the groups. This would have
effectively given the government a "God's Eye View" of everything critics were
saying and planning.

This has been a year full of stories about the loss of freedom, but as far as
the U.S. goes, this has the potential to be the biggest story yet.

------
PeterisP
This is a classic approach used in Russia and other countries against anti-
ruling-party organizations, but I had (probably naively) expected USA to be
better than this.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
These are anti-tax organizations. Imagine that the taxing authority might be
interested in their activities. The head of the IRS is a Republican appointee,
who if anything would be sympathetic to them from a political standpoint.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Would you advocate in favor of DEA agents harassing marijuana legalization
non-profits? Preemptively: if not, why are you defending the practice of the
same being done to your political opponents?

~~~
pekk
That's a nonsensical question, because the DEA does not have the authority or
responsibility to decide anything about applications for non-profit status
under tax law.

IRS does. And if they stop investigating right-wing organizations selectively
(while still investigating other applications) because it will be perceived as
unfair, then they will be doing the wrong thing.

~~~
jamesaguilar
My understanding is that they are focusing on right wing organizations. If
they are just investigating them at the ordinary rate the.n this is not a
problem.

------
vishaldpatel
Many of these groups would like the IRS to go away entirely. Many of these
groups would like to not pay taxes at all.

Why would the IRS spend an equal amount of time investigating everyone, when
certain groups go out of their way to paint big targets on their backs?

~~~
eurleif
It's the IRS's job to collect tax revenue. It's not the IRS's job to protect
its own existence. That's politics, and the IRS should not be involved in
politics.

~~~
chc
I think you are misunderstanding. I believe the parent's point is not that the
IRS is targeting anti-tax groups out of umbrage or fear, but that people who
loudly declare taxation to be illegitimate are signaling, "Hey, I'm especially
likely to try and evade paying taxes."

Similarly, if there were a group dedicated to the idea that seducing little
boys was OK, you could expect it to get some extra scrutiny from the FBI. This
is not because the FBI is made up of little boys who feel threatened, but
because these people are waving a big red flag that they're probably engaged
in activities that the FBI has an interest in.

~~~
eurleif
You're using an extreme example, and I think a lot of people will agree in
that case because it's extreme, but might have reservations about applying the
same logic elsewhere. For example, should it be ok to single out people who
advocate marijuana legalization for drug crime investigations?

There has to be some restraint, or else people will be afraid to participate
in the political process.

~~~
wtallis
I think it depends on what kind of "singling out" is being considered. What
the IRS agents did in this case definitely crossed the line. But they _should_
be allowed to scrutinize applications from suspect groups, and probably also
be allowed to ask for more information to the extent that they would in a
random audit. Further than that should require strong probable cause and
warrants and all the other due process that was ignored by the IRS agents in
this case.

A drug case would probably get to the point of needing a warrant much sooner,
since a pro-legalization activist isn't usually directly initiating contact
with the government, so the government has no business asking for information
without a warrant. But if a pro-legalization activist makes public statements
about their illegal activities or intentions, it's okay for the DEA to keep an
eye on those public statements and to use them to try to get a warrant.

------
adventured
It's worth noting the IRS also targeted various Jewish organizations (eg Z
Street) as well, not just those critical of the government and taxation like
the Tea Party.

Clearly the IRS has a problem with targeting bias.

------
ck2
This should be solved by removing tax-exempt status under 501c4 for all
parties of any persuasion.

Then remove tax exempt status for all religious organizations which is a huge
scam anyway.

This would be win-win for both stereotypes of the right wanting to "widen the
base" and the left "liking taxes".

~~~
n3rdy
Or just scrap the whole tax thing. We were building roads and services before
taxes.

Every justification for taxation not only has evidence that there is no
correlation between tax revenues and resolved problems, but that we are more
than capable of solving these problems ourselves through voluntary
collaboration, rather than coercive.

~~~
SageRaven
> We were building roads and services before taxes.

That's all I need: Paying to use Verizon Interstate Highway in order to
traverse my state.

Infrastructure is one of the few things that taxes are pretty good for, as
most everyone benefits from roads, utility grids, etc.. War, scanning air
travelers, and installing the Great Eye of Sauron at every intersection are
not good uses of public money.

------
gleenn
Pretty outrageous to hear the IRS is doing this.

------
jaynos
Between 2010 and 2012, applications doubled in volume. A large part of that
increase was Tea Party groups. Seems like the review was pointed at the right
target (when I owned a business, I inspected the work of the new guys more
than the people who had been with me for a few years). The real issue should
be that 300 groups were reviewed and none were rejected. The 501(c)(4) class
is filled with "social welfare" groups that provide no social welfare. The
only "social welfare" I see is lobbying and ads filled with half truths (this
goes for liberal groups as well, though not as much). If you want to limit
abortions or allow more access to guns (just examples, not a description of
the groups involved), feel free to do so with donations that get taxed. Just
don't tell me it's in the name if social welfare.

~~~
praxeologist
"Between 2010 and 2012, applications doubled in volume. A large part of that
increase was Tea Party groups."

Really? Do you have a source for that? I'm having a hard time finding a list
of all these types of groups. There are some listed on wikipedia, everything
from the Colbert SuperPAC to the Washington Science Fiction Association, so
what constitutes "social welfare" seems to be pretty loosely evaluated.

------
knowtheory
As a counterpoint to a lot of the outrage, it's worth noting that the rules
around 501c4 organizations are fucked.

As Ezra Klein points out "The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They
should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s."

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/10/t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/10/the-
irs-was-wrong-to-target-the-tea-party-they-shouldve-gone-after-all-501c4s/)

The fact that this has become a political issue is a huge failure of
governance, not politics.

~~~
newbie12
Wow Ezra Klein gets it completely wrong. I think he's confusing 501 c(4) and
c(3). c(3) are traditional social welfare charities and donations to them are
tax exempt, c(4) are explicitly for political lobbying and donations are
taxable. (I worked as an executive in this space for a decade). c(4) cannot
get involved in elections (they can't call for the election or defeat of a
specific candidate) but they can do "voter education". But in any event, the
donations made to a c(4) are not tax-deductible and are private. By the way,
the c4 privacy rules emerged out of the civil rights movement, when there was
a concern about the government punishing people supporting civil rights. Many
groups-- think Sierra Club-- have both a c(3) and a c(4) and have internal
accounting in place to keep track of it all.

