Former NPR CEO Ken Stern: The IRS Had the Right Idea

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/25/former-npr-ceo-ken-stern-the-irs-had-the-right-idea.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Fpolitics+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Politics%29


Former NPR CEO Ken Stern: The IRS Had the Right Idea
by Ken Stern May 25, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
What’s so bad about the IRS investigating nonprofit applications? That’s their job. The real scandal is that the ensuing hubbub will discourage them from doing it again, writes Ken Stern.


Over the last week, commentators have expressed great outrage over the handling by the IRS of applications by Tea Party groups and others for 501(c)(4) status. In the haste to trigger the next administration-crippling “gate,” these analyses have largely ignored one of the most surprising aspects of this entire episode—that the IRS was actually trying to do its job.

A little context is warranted. There are more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in this country, a number that reliably grows by more than 50,000 each year. It’s an incredibly important sector of our economy—not just because it represents more than $1.5 trillion in annual revenues and close to 15 percent of the American workforce, but also because nonprofits dominate critical fields such as education, health care, social services, arts, and, yes, politics. Yet, despite the critical nature of these organizations and their services, the Exempt Organizations Division, the group within the IRS charged with regulating the field, plays only the most passive of roles with respect to the nonprofit sector.

How passive? The approval rate for applications to form public charities (and charities account for more than two thirds of the nonprofit sector) stands in excess of 99.8 percent. It takes little more than a reasonable facility with government forms, a small check, and the patience to wait a few months to start a federally approved charity. And the problem has only grown worse in recent years, as the IRS budget and staffing have been repeatedly pruned (by more than $1 billion) and the number of applications for nonprofit status has continued to surge. The IRS’s role in the review process is almost entirely ministerial: a quick review of forms, a flurry of stamps and signatures, and a letter of endorsement.

That has led to some truly astonishing results: charitable status has been granted to the Renegade Rollergirls in Bend, Oregon; the All Colorado Beer Festival; and the Sugar Bowl, just to mention a few. The issue is of significant dimensions. The tax-privileged status of nonprofits, including the enormously profitable $650 billion-a-year charitable hospital industry, costs federal, state, and local government tens of billions of dollars annually in lost income from charitable deductions, income-tax exemptions, and property-tax abatements.

It is thus a rather extraordinary development that the IRS roused itself to carefully scrutinize a significant number of applications for 501(c)(4) status.

snip//

In the best of all possible worlds, the congressional hearings, the very public resignations, and the ritual floggings on Meet the Press would encourage the IRS to continue to investigate thoroughly, but just in a more evenhanded fashion. It won’t work that way. The tax bureaucracy will become even more cautious, more reluctant to stick its neck out, more likely to rubber-stamp ever more applications—legitimate or not. That may be good for someone, but it will be bad for anyone who wants a well-regulated nonprofit field not pockmarked and diminished by fraudulent, miscategorized, and ineffective organizations.

[Eddie Haskell]

1. About time

Someone had the balls to stand up to these thugs.

[datasuspect]

2. premeditated, media savvy marketing on the part of our owners.

what better way to rehabilitate the image of a failing, psychotic, racist movement than to pit the teabaggers against the IRS in time for the next election cycle?

i mean, this is the same IRS that went after Willie.