Free Speech Win! IRS Will No Longer Require Certain Donor Lists Up Front - Granite Grok

Free Speech Win! IRS Will No Longer Require Certain Donor Lists Up Front

IRS-BuildingSwamp Rats inside the IRS can’t leak what they don’t have. And thanks to a new rule the IRS will no longer be collecting personal donor data upfront from organizations that include (for our triggered progressive “friends”) unions and Planned Parenthood.

The Treasury Department said the policy change will maintain donor disclosure requirements for traditional charity groups organized under section 501(c)(3) of tax law. But it frees labor unions, advocacy groups, veterans organizations and other nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood that do not receive tax-exempt money from complying with the decades-old confidential disclosure requirements.

“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.

Did you read that part about Unions and Planned Parenthood? That’s not how CNN or The New York Times reported it.

NYT: “I.R.S. Will No Longer Force Kochs and Other Groups to Disclose Donors”

Other groups meaning (after you dig down a few paragraph),

Political nonprofits will still have to collect the information, but will not be required to turn it over to the government unless they are audited.

Previously, nonprofits such as unions and organizations classified as 501(c)(4) groups were required to report to the government the names of donors who contributed more than $5,000 in the span of a year. That information was redacted on the publicly viewable forms the groups file annually, though amounts of donations remain visible.

Nonprofits that exist primarily to influence political campaigns, including so-called 501(c)(3) and 527 organizations, will still be required to report the names of large donors, as will charities that accept tax-deductible contributions.

Over at CNN, we get, “NRA and some other nonprofits will no longer need to identify their donors to the IRS.” And again, a few parapgraphs in,

Senior Treasury officials said that donor lists have inadvertently been released in the past, and groups on both the left and the right had worried that people would be reluctant to make donations if they were worried their names would become public.

“Many groups with diverse beliefs have this concern,” said a senior Treasury official briefing reporters on the change early Tuesday.

The explanation for this is that these are click-bait headlines. The moment any raging left-wing moonbat sees either of these they will make a bee-line for the article and the share button. OMG! TDS! #Resistance. Money isn’t speech.

Sure it is. Just ask CNN or the Times. Without Money they have nothing. Neither does your activist group, favorite candidate, or anyone else who wants to reach anyone whom they want to reach.

This IRS rule is a good thing.

It addresses concerns over political insiders leaking sensitive donor data to activists on the ground. Those groups then harass or intimidate donors to organizations or causes they oppose to send a message to everyone else. We’ll find out and when we do you are next unless you stop donating to them now.

Again from the Times,

There are many examples of inadvertent disclosure of donor information from federal forms in recent years. In 2013, the I.R.S. posted a list of donors to an arm of the Republican Governors Association. In 2016, a federal judge cited a pattern of such disclosures when ruling against the State of California’s request for donor information from Americans for Prosperity.

The ruling noted that the state had posted more than 1,700 confidential donor lists on the internet, including the names and addresses of hundreds of donors to Planned Parenthood.

The rule’s elimination will limit the data that the government collects, but will not affect public disclosure: The I.R.S. will now be able to see those groups’ lists of big donors only if it specifically requests them. The public has not been able to see those lists under existing rules, unless the government disclosed them inadvertently.

Donors should feel free to give to whatever causes they choose without risking intimidation from anyone. That’s my position, and I think my history of observations here about the first amendment support that. The political opposition, not so much.

But I’m sure they’ll have words on this soon enough, at which point we’ll revisit it.

 

H/T Washington Times

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