The IRS Scandal: Who’s Really Being Gullible?

June 27, 2014 5:57PM

By Walter Olson

Some figures on the left have aggressively sought to dismiss the renewed Internal Revenue Service scandal as unserious. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) captured this mood at one recent Capitol Hill hearing when he suggested that after questioning whether the loss of emails was truly accidental, his GOP colleagues might go on next to quiz the IRS’s leadership about the president’s birth certificate and space aliens in Roswell, N.M. It’s not a “serious inquiry,” Rep. Doggett said. “I believe it’s an endless conspiracy theory here.”

And yet many Americans who do not care about space aliens do doubt the IRS’s account of what has happened. While we covered the story a year ago as well as more recently, this might be a good time to recapitulate why.

The IRS grants 501(c)(4) nonprofit status (less favorable than (c)(3) tax status, which affords donors charitable deductibility) to a wide array of “social welfare” organizations–many, like the ACLU, with a definite ideological valence. In recent years the status has been sought and obtained by groups whose missions are closely related to campaign and electoral politics, most notably Organizing for America, whose role on the national scene is to support President Obama’s messaging. Not surprisingly this has excited controversy about whether the eligibility rules for (c)(4) status are being drawn in the right place. Most advocates profess to believe, though, that whatever .....

Read more here. http://www.cato.org/blog/irs-scandal-whos-really-being-gullible?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=45ff95cf1d-Cato_Today&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-45ff95cf1d-141711202&mc_cid=45ff95cf1d&mc_eid=f1b517a66d