Tag Archives: Topic: Taxation

National Review: IRS scandal notwithstanding, on Tuesday, the (Republican-dominated) Texas legislature passed S.B. 346, a bill to force non-profit organizations and trade associations to disclose the names of the people who support them financially. The law exempts unions, but covers groups that spend more than $25,000 or more in independent expenditures about political candidates. This applies even if those expenditures are a tiny fraction of the group’s overall spending . . .

Daily Mail: Texas Republican congressman Kevin Brady had the harshest criticism for Miller. ‘Is this still America?’ he asked him. ‘Is this government so drunk on power that it would turn its full force, its full might, to harass, and intimidate, and threaten an average American who only wants her voice, their voices heard?’

LifeNews: During intense questioning at a Congressional hearing this morning Rep. Aaron Schock asked acting commissioner Steven Miller if the IRS has asked a pro-life group about the content of its prayers.

The Hill: “When you talk about targeting, that’s a pejorative term,” Miller said. Asked if the IRS’s actions had been illegal, he responded: “I don’t believe it is.” He then added of the behavior: “I don’t believe it should happen.”

Washington Examiner: Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

CNSNews: The audience rose to its feet after Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Penn.) chided acting Commissioner Steve Miller about the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) treatment of taxpayers at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.

Howard Gleckman at Christian Science Monitor: The Supreme Court pushed the IRS into the morass of regulating political speech with its Citizens United decision. Congress needs to pull the IRS out of the political swamp.

AP: An internal IRS memo says Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, will retire June 3.

NewsMax: A pro-marriage organization claims the IRS leaked confidential financial documents to a rival group which were then used against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the 2012 election.

WorldNetDaily: That was confirmed today when Dr. James Dobson, whose has served as an adviser to presidents and now runs Dr. James Dobson’s FamilyTalk, said his organization’s status was threatened because it didn’t present “all views.”

NRB: In light of the Internal Revenue Service’s admission to “inappropriate” scrutiny of conservative groups, NRB President & CEO Dr. Frank Wright has encouraged House Speaker John Boehner and other Congressional leaders to stand up for churches and non-profit religious organizations.

Todd Starnes at Fox News: IRS Told Pro-Life Group Not to Picket Planned Parenthood

Washington Examiner: IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

CNSNews: While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year – following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

CNN: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requested – and has accepted – the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in the wake of its handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Sun Sentinel: Provide copies of all 7,000 web pages. All blog posts, newsletters, bulletins, fliers and hand bills. Provide copies of the agendas and minutes of board meetings and resumes of each board member. The percentage of time spent on activities, sources of money… Faced with round after round of such questions, the group abandoned its attempt, disbanded and re-invented itself under the name National Liberty Federation.

Global Post (Reuters): The IRS is charged with distributing health insurance tax credits through the state exchanges. But the complaint argues that the federally created exchanges cannot deliver the tax credits because the law does not say explicitly that they can. The challengers are asking for a federal court order barring administration and enforcement of the healthcare law in these 33 states . . . At least six other lawsuits against the healthcare law are pending in court’s around the country. The case, No. 13-623 Halbig et al v. Sebelius et al, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

CNSNews: The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which first accused the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of seeking to intimidate Tea Party groups 14 months ago, legally represents 27 such groups and is now demanding that the IRS approve the tax-exempt status of 10 of the groups or face possible legal action.

Broadening IRS Victims Include Pro-Life Advocates, As Congress Investigates Thomas More Society Cases Demonstrate Conservative Bias Only “Tip of Iceberg”   (May 15, 2013 – Chicago)  The Thomas More Society is speaking out about blatant bias by the supposedly apolitical …

James Bovard at Wall Street Journal: As David Burnham noted in “A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power” (1990), “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.”

The Hill: “Not only has the IRS retaliated against conservative, small-government and tea party groups as they apply for recognition of tax exemption AND lied about it, but it has criminally released our confidential tax return including the identity of dozens of major donors to a political enemy,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president.

Politico: The same Internal Revenue Service office that singled out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny also challenged Israel-related organizations, at least one of which filed suit over the agency’s handling of its application for tax-exempt status.

Politico: The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama. Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010.

Daily Mail: When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train.

Barry Lynn at the Huffington Post: But some houses of worship do it anyway. They openly violate the law and even brag about it. One Religious Right outfit, the Alliance Defending Freedom, even sets aside a Sunday each year to encourage political chicanery. This is not a secret. Americans United has been pressing the IRS to put a stop to this for years. The agency continues to drag its feet.

AP: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker call the allegations “Big Brother come to life.”

The Hill: The House Ways and Means Committee will examine the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups at a hearing Friday.

National Review: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell tells National Review that Steven Miller, the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, should step down.

Politico: “We are looking at it pretty seriously,” said Dan Backer, a lawyer who represents a half dozen conservative groups targeted by the IRS, including Combat Veterans Training Group and TheTeaParty.net. “Given the sheer scope of maleficence at the IRS, there may be a legal recourse.”

Erik Stanley at Speak Up Movement: But what should be reported is that the targeting by the IRS goes even deeper than what is just reported. Because the IRS has been targeting churches since the passage of the Johnson Amendment in 1954. There is no difference between what the IRS has been caught doing with conservative groups and what the IRS has done to churches for the last 59 years. Both are intimidation.

The Hill: “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contradictory to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable,” Obama said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

FoxNews: An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

Newsok.com: An Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman told reporters on a hastily-arranged conference call Friday that employees targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny during the 2012 election weren’t acting out of political bias, but she couldn’t name any groups with less conservative-sounding names.

James Taranto at WSJ: n September 1989 the New York Times magazine published an excerpt of “The IRS: A Law Unto Itself,” a book by former Times reporter David Burnham. Burnham detailed how the Internal Revenue Service had misused its power in an attempt to stifle political dissent . . .

Kristan Hawkins at Townhall: The bottom-line is this: Kermit Gosnell is not unique. He is a product of the culture of death that Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars cultivates and encourages, beginning with our youth. While Students for Life’s Planned Parenthood Project will soon expose Planned Parenthood’s corrupt, dirty, and deadly practices on campuses nationwide, it’s time for Washington, starting with Republican House Leadership, to investigate and defund the abortion Goliath once and for all.

AP:The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

CNBC: Get ready for the Internal Revenue Service to play a dominant role in health care. When Obamacare takes full effect next year, the agency will enforce most of the laws involved in the reform—even deciding who gets included in the health-care mandate.

George F. Will at Washington Post: The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.

A Maine church’s ordeal in court may lead to a modification in state law that will help end inequities between how churches and non-church charities are treated in property taxation matters.

Volokh Conspiracy: Last week, several small business owners and individuals filed suit challenging the legality of an IRS rule purporting to authorize tax credits for the purchase of qualifying health insurance policies in federal exchanges.

Americans for Tax Reform: sked about Senator Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) recent “train wreck” comments, President Obama today said, “A huge chunk of it [Obamacare] has already been implemented.” Unmentioned was the wave of destructive Obamacare tax increases that will begin to hit Americans during the next tax filing season and beyond . . .

Crossmap at Christian Post: The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) joined an amici brief in support of New Hampshire’s tax credit program for businesses that wish to help students attending private schools.  In January, the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit against New Hampshire’s Education Tax Credit Program.

Washington Post: If a Peace Corps volunteer is raped and becomes pregnant as a result, she has to pay for an abortion herself, because the federal government refuses to cover the cost.

NewsObserver: North Carolina’s 115 public school systems would lose the right to take their local board of county commissioners to court for more funding under a bill filed in the state Senate.

AZ Central: Attorney General Thomas Horne has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that requires the Legislature to provide an annual boost in public school funding to cover inflation.

AZ Catholic Conference: The Arizona Senate has passed an important school choice bill (HB 2617) today that would expand the pool of potential donors under the existing corporate scholarship (tuition) tax credit to include S corporations and Limited Liability Companie

Alan Sears at Alliance Defending Freedom: This week’s deadline for filing your 2012 U.S. income taxes is a good reminder that many organizations you care about depend on Alliance Defending Freedom to defend their tax credits and tax-exempt status. Just this month, we’ve intervened in two cases to protect your religious freedom from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who once again are proving that their idea of liberty does not include parents deciding where their children are educated.

Washington Times: Fortunately, however, groups are beginning to pop up all over the nation, such as the Alliance Defense Fund, who held their fourth annual “Pulpit Initiative” to challenge the IRS into forgoing this Unconstitutional power. There also is HR 127, a bill to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which has been proposed by Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina’s Third District.

Jeremy Tedesco of Alliance Defending Freedom and John O’Connor of Equality California on Due Diligence Voice of Russia Radio to discuss this: Should Calif. punish Boy Scouts with loss of tax-exempt status? | MP3 audio 16:58 mins

Peter J. Reilly at Forbes: Erik Stanley of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the nondenominational megachurch, told me that they are planning to appeal. The argument is that, in Tennessee, universities can run bookstores without affecting their property tax exemption and “family wellness centers” can run fitness clubs (As a matter of fact, the church has turned operation of the fitness center over to the YMCA), so churches should be able to also run both of them. For whatever it is worth, neither operation was a money maker.

lliance Defending Freedom, Cornerstone Policy Research, and Liberty Institute have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with a New Hampshire court in defense of the state’s tax credit program for businesses that wish to help students attending private schools.

Peter J. Reilly at Forbes: The church was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Erik Stanley of ADF had commented earlier in the litigation: “Tax exemptions for churches are vitally important because it doesn’t make sense to penalize organizations that help serve the community and don’t exist for profit–and that’s certainly true with this church,” Stanley explained. “The taxing authorities in this case determined that the facilities were not integral to a religious purpose of the church, but the government is ill-equipped to determine what is and what isn’t a legitimate religious use. That’s why it shouldn’t be delving into church affairs. Doing so violates the constitutionally protected rights of the church.”

AP: The Senate Governance and Finance Committee voted 5 to 2 to move the first-of-its-kind bill to the Senate Appropriations Committee for review.

The Blaze: “SB 323′s primary purpose is to penalize BSA based on its constitutionally protected membership policy and the values that underlie it,” lawyers for the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom wrote in a letter to lawmakers last week. “This type of targeted punishment of a group based on how it exercises its associational and free speech rights violates the First Amendment.”

Washington Post (AP): “SB 323’s primary purpose is to penalize BSA based on its constitutionally protected membership policy and the values that underlie it,” lawyers for the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom wrote in a letter to lawmakers last week. “This type of targeted punishment of a group based on how it exercises its associational and free speech rights violates the First Amendment.” | also at NBC

Examiner.com: Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom, took not of the bill, pointing out that it is a violation of the First Amendment: “SB323′s primary purpose is to penalize BSA based on its constitutionally protected membership policy and the values that underlie it. This type of targeted punishment of a group based on how it exercises its associational and free speech rights violates the First Amendment.”

NCPA Policy Digest: Taxpayers around the country will soon be grappling with massive amounts of debt they had no idea they were responsible for. The hidden debt is the result of $7.3 billion in promises that were made by state legislators but never approved by taxpayers, says Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Charisma: Youth organizations that have benefitted America for generations should be free from harassment by politicians who don’t agree with the very values that have made these groups successful,” said Senior Counsel David Cortman. “The Constitution protects the freedom of youth organizations like the Boy Scouts to promote the values that have defined them as an organization and to ensure that their leaders and members adhere to those values.” . . . “The First Amendment protects the freedom of youth organizations to associate with members and leaders who share their values,” added Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Our youth deserve to continue to benefit from these groups, and bills like SB 323 severely threaten their ability to do so.” [more]

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel David Cortman says nonprofits serving youths have constitutional protection to promote their beliefs and values. “America’s youth organizations that have benefitted our country for generations should be free from harassment by politicians who don’t agree with the very values that have made these groups successful,” says Cortman. “The Constitution protects the freedom of youth organizations like the Boy Scouts to promote the values that have defined them as an organization for well over 100 years.” . . . . ADF senior legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco explains further. “The First Amendment protects the freedom of youth organizations to associate with members and leaders who share their values,” he explains. “Our youth deserve to continue to benefit from these groups, and bills like SB 323 severely threaten their ability to do so.”

lliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to members of the California Legislature Friday to explain the significant legal and policy problems of a proposed bill designed to punish non-profit youth organizations like the Boy Scouts of America

NCPA Policy Digest: Everything the government does should be justified by law, including the levying and spending of taxes and fees. Nearly all states have adopted a meaningful definition of what a “tax” is.

Religion Clause Blog: A petition for certiorari (full text) was filed Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court in Big Sky Colony, Inc. v. Montana Department of Labor and Industry.

Religion Clause Blog: The New York Times reported earlier this week on the unusual recent decision by the Internal Revenue Service to revoke its 2003 “church plan” designation for the employee retirement plan of Hospital Center of Orange.

Reuters: Members of the Pennsylvania legislature are pushing back against a state Supreme Court decision that made it more difficult for hospitals to prove they are nonprofit organizations deserving of tax-exempt status.

Catherine Glenn Foster at LifeNews: Planned Parenthood is as secretive as it is deadly. In other words, it not only ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn children each year but also conceals records revealing pertinent aspects of its operation costs, important details regarding “policies and services available to minors,” and it provides different numbers on salary information based on whether it is filling out state or federal paperwork. (also at Townhall)

Investor’s Business Daily: Americans are migrating from less-free liberal states to more-free conservative states, where they are doing better economically, according to a new study published Thursday by the George Mason University’s Mercatus Center . . . The freest state overall, the researchers concluded, was North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. The least free state by far was New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Rhode Island
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Authur B. Laffer and Stephen Moore at WSJ: In short, red states of the South and other areas of the country are moving forward with pro-growth tax reform, while California and the blue states of the Northeast are doubling down on Obamanomics and European progressivism. Who will come out on top? Our money is on the red states and those wisely following their lead.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Goliath that Pittsburgh faces is UPMC, a $10 billion medical enterprise defined by superlatives — largest health care provider in the region, biggest property owner in Allegheny County. It is considered a tax-exempt nonprofit, which means it gets a $20 million tax break from the city every year because it pays taxes on only a portion of its properties and no payroll preparation tax.

Kansas City Star: The Kansas House approved legislation Wednesday to prevent abortion providers from claiming tax breaks or assisting with public school sex education classes, and Senate leaders promised their chamber will consider it quickly. The vote in the Republican-dominated House was 92-31.

The Hill: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that while he believes in the “historic and religious definition of marriage,” he believes the federal tax code should be reformed in a way to make it “more neutral” and not exclude same-sex couples.

Reuters: Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, the lesbian couple at the center of a major gay rights case set to go before the Supreme Court this month, were in many ways a typical New York power couple.

Erik Stanley at Speak Up Movement: America is in the midst of a debate on the definition of marriage, the foundation for a stable society and a stable home.  Americans desperately need to hear from their pastors what God says about marriage, the institution He created. This year, our country faces one of the most pressing issues in our history as efforts are underway to radically redefine the institution of marriage, the relationship that God established long ago in the Garden of Eden even before the Fall of mankind. . . . With all this in mind, Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2013 will be a Sunday focused on marriage.

Seattle Times: Struggling to respond to a state Supreme Court order to put more money into education, some state Senate Republicans on Wednesday came up with a way to save a bit of money: reduce the size of the court. Senate Bill 5867, introduced Wednesday morning, would reduce the court from nine members to five (the minimum allowed in the state constitution).

TribLive.com: Allegheny County nonprofits that own tax-exempt properties will likely receive one or more of 2,800 letters this week asking them to prove to the Office of Property Assessments that they deserve the tax break.

Religion Clause Blog: In Thompson v. Commissioner, (USTC, March 4, 2013), the U.S. Tax Court faced the question of the extent to which a taxpayer entering an installment agreement for the payment of back taxes should be allowed to continue to tithe to the Mormon Church.

Bloomberg: Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank.