Tag: irs

Churches Can Endorse Political Candidates to Their Members: IRS

The IRS on July 7 outlined an exception to a decades-old rule, the Johnson Amendment, which had banned tax-exempt religious organizations from campaigning for political candidates.

In a court filing regarding a lawsuit against the government by two Texas churches and the National Religious Broadcasters Association, the federal agency said the ban would not apply to faith organizations when they are campaigning to their own members.

The Christian groups sought reforms to nonprofit law that bans tax-exempt groups from political campaigning, arguing that the rule “unconstitutionally prohibits § 501(c)(3) [non-profit, tax-exempt] organizations from engaging in political speech.”

When campaigning for his first presidential term, President Donald Trump told the “evangelical and religious community” he wanted to repeal the law that “threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.”

“Their voice has been taken away,” he said at the time.

“I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and to protect free speech for all Americans.

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Lawsuit Aims To Prevent IRS From Targeting Conservative Groups Ever Again

The mechanism that allowed the IRS to deny right-leaning groups legal nonprofit status during Barack Obama’s administration is still on the books, but this week a conservative group is challenging the provision in court to prevent it from being weaponized again.

Back in 2013, when Obama was president and Lois Lerner led the IRS Tax-Exempt Organizations division, Americans learned that conservative groups seeking nonprofit tax-exempt status were being blackballed by the IRS.

A 2014 House Oversight Committee report shows how huge the scandal was when it was discovered: “A May 2013 review of the IRS tax-exempt applications found that not a single group identifying itself as ‘Tea Party’ was approved by the IRS after February 2010, when the new targeting criteria were instated, while dozens of ‘progressive’ groups were approved.”

But 11 years later, the same criteria on the application for a nonprofit 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status remain, leaving the door open to more corruption.

Lex Politica Attorney Chris Gober has been working since then to change the rule on behalf of Freedom Path, a now nearly inactive conservative issue advocacy organization that filed for tax-exempt status in 2011. After the IRS requested a list of Freedom Path’s donors in 2012, and the 2014 Lois Lerner scandal blew over, finally in 2020 — nine years after its application — the IRS denied Freedom Path nonprofit status on the basis of the same “Facts and Circumstances Test” weaponized against conservative groups in the scandal.  

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is defending the Facts and Circumstances Test as the case returns to court this week for a status report with Washington, D.C., District Judge Jia M. Cobb. Freedom Path is asking the court to declare the Facts and Circumstances Test “unconstitutionally vague.”

The IRS uses the 11-factor Facts and Circumstances Test (seen below) to evaluate whether a group’s advocacy communications, such as advertising campaigns, should be considered “issue advocacy” — which would allow the group to become a tax-exempt nonprofit — or if its communications should be considered a “political campaign intervention,” preventing the group from gaining tax-exempt status.

The test is subjective; results depend on the values of the person evaluating the applicant’s material.

“It has a necessary chilling effect, because conservative groups nationwide will have to self-censor rather than risk IRS retaliation,” Gober told The Federalist.

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Reports: Secretary Bessent and Musk came to blows behind closed doors

Former Trump strategist and War Room host Steve Bannon claimed this week that tech billionaire Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent literally came to blows inside the White House over a heated disagreement regarding the future leadership of the IRS.

According to Bannon, the clash erupted just moments after both men exited the Oval Office in April following a tense meeting with President Trump about who should lead the IRS.

The dispute centered on Acting IRS Commissioner Gary Shapley—a key whistleblower in the Hunter Biden tax fraud cover-up—who had reportedly been installed at Musk’s request, bypassing Bessent’s approval entirely.

Gary Shapley, the whistleblower who came forward and exposed the political interference in the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation, was named interim IRS Commissioner after Melanie Krause resigned.

Krause stepped down amid controversy over a data-sharing agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The New York Times reported that Bessent approached Trump and told him Shapley was put in his position at the IRS without his knowledge.

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IRS Whistleblowers Responded Perfectly to Hunter Biden’s Latest Legal Move

Either he wants to move on with his life, or it confirms what we all knew about Hunter Biden and his saga with the Internal Revenue Service. The crack cocaine-addicted son of Joe Biden has thrown in the towel regarding his lawsuit against whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler, who delivered damning testimony against the Biden Justice Department, alleging their investigations into the then-president’s son were interfered with on the regular. Hunter has moved to drop the lawsuit. 

“His voluntary dismissal of the case tells you everything you need to know about who was right and who was wrong,” said Shapley and Zeigler (via Fox News):

Hunter Biden on Wednesday dropped the lawsuit he filed against two Internal Revenue Service whistle-blowers in September 2023.  

Biden’s attorneys brought a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again in any court.  

The lawsuit, initially filed by the former first son two years ago, alleged that IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler had “targeted and sought to embarrass” Biden through statements to the media disclosing the details of the tax matters of a “private citizen.” 

Shapley and Zielger had testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier that year, saying they faced various limitations when tasked with investigating former President Joe Biden’s son.  

“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” Shapley and Zielger said in a statement after Hunter Biden dropped the case, according to the New York Post. “Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work. We truly wanted our day in court to provide the complete story, but it appears Mr. Biden was afraid to actually fight this case in a court of law after all.” 

“His voluntary dismissal of the case tells you everything you need to know about who was right and who was wrong,” they added.  

Lawyers for the two whistle-blowers first emphasized how Hunter Biden “dismissed his case with prejudice – meaning he can never bring it again,” and did so “in exchange for nothing at all.” 

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Hunter Biden drops lawsuit against IRS whistleblowers, who say suit was ‘attempt to intimidate’

Hunter Biden has agreed to drop his federal lawsuit against IRS whistle-blowers who publicly argued federal investigations against then-President Joe Biden’s son were being mishandled by their agency and by the Justice Department.

“Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work,” IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler, who publicly raised concerns about what they considered the federal government’s slow-walking of the investigation, they said following the announcement Wednesday evening that the suit had been dismissed.

The lawyers for Hunter Biden filed a joint notice with the IRS telling the federal judge that they “hereby give notice of the dismissal with prejudice of all claims asserted in the Amended Complaint” that had been filed by their client. 

The dismissal being made “with prejudice” essentially means that the lawsuit cannot be brought again.

“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” Shapley and Ziegler said. “However, we were always motivated by doing the right thing, defending our work, and honoring our duty to the American people.” 

Biden attorneys filed a lawsuit against the IRS in September 2023, alleging “agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.”

“While Mr. Biden has been the victim of various leaks regarding the IRS investigation previously, most recently, two IRS agents – Mr. Gary Shapley and Mr. Joseph Ziegler – and their attorneys raised the stakes to unprecedented levels with their numerous public appearances,” they said.

The lawyers doubled down on these claims in a February 2024 amended complaint to the federal court.

The legal team for the IRS whistle-blowers, at Empower Oversight, on Wednesday said: “Hunter Biden brought this lawsuit against two honorable federal agents in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the preferential treatment he was given by President Biden’s Department of Justice,” they said. “Shapley and Ziegler did nothing wrong.”

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The IRS Isn’t Going Away, and This Is How We Know

As the 2024 campaign neared its send, candidate Donald Trump began promising that, if elected, he would support the elimination of income taxes. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump then began saying he planned to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. The Trump team claimed in each case that it could raise enough tax revenue from tariffs to replace tax revenue from income taxes.

By March, however, Trump began backtracking, and his administration announced that the new goal was to eliminate income taxes for people making under $150,000 per year.

That last development on its own tells us that the IRS isn’t going away. If people making more than $150,000 are still going to pay income tax, then there will still be an IRS to which we’ll need to send tax returns to prove we’re not making more than $150,000.Raico, Ralph

But even if we ignore that problem, there are at least two other reasons why we can be sure the IRS isn’t going anywhere. The first way we know this is from the fact that the Trump administration is only talking about “abolishing” the progressive individual income tax. Administration mouthpieces have said nothing at all about getting rid of the income taxes known as “payroll taxes” that every wage earner pays.

The second way we know that the IRS isn’t going away is that taxes on imports—i.e., tariffs—simply aren’t going to bring in enough revenue to keep funding all the popular spending programs that Trump clearly has no interest in cutting.

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Bill Gates’ Foundation in Danger of Losing Tax-Exempt Status for Alleged Discrimination Against White Americans

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire leftist Bill Gates’ nonprofit may be in danger of losing its tax-exempt status.

The news surrounding the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also involves two other organizations facing accusations of breaking the law when it comes to their scholarship and career programs, the Times of India reported on Thursday.

“The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) has accused the Gates Foundation, the Lagrant Foundation, and the Creative Capital Foundation 0f ‘intentionally’ excluding white people, a claim detailed in letters sent to the IRS. The AAER argues that these alleged discriminatory practices may violate federal law and provide sufficient grounds for the IRS to revoke the organizations’ tax-exempt status,” the report said.

In a statement, AAER President Edward Blum stated, “These organizations are free to operate as they wish — but not with the public subsidy that tax-exempt status provides. Racial discrimination, whether in scholarships, professional development, or artistic grants, violates public policy and must not be underwritten by American taxpayers.”

“Organizations that discriminate based on race — whether their intentions are benevolent or not — are not eligible for public subsidies through the tax code. The IRS must act to uphold the law,” he added.

A Breitbart News article in 2021 detailed how many famous billionaires avoid paying taxes. Among those who reportedly paid very low taxes was Bill Gates.

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MI Republican Lawmakers Send Letter to AG Pam Bondi—Ask For Investigation Into GBI Strategies and Other Voter Registration Groups

MI Speaker Pro Tempore Rachelle Smit and Chair of the MI House Election Integrity Committee has sent a letter to the United States Attorney General Pam Bondi calling for an investigation into fraudulent voter registration efforts and electioneering by partisan voter registration groups who have accepted donations from 501(c)(3) organizations in violation of IRS regulations that prohibit them from engaging in partisan activities.

The letter was signed by Smit and 21 additional Michigan Representatives. Not a single Democrat lawmaker from Michigan signed the letter. Is it possible that the Democratic state representatives don’t care about protecting the sanctity and integrity of elections in Michigan? Would it be wrong to assume that Democrat lawmakers in Michigan especially don’t want GBI Strategies, an organization that was caught by the Michigan State Police, MI Secretary of State’s office and Michigan Attorney General’s office, delivering fake registrations to clerks across the state of Michigan, in person and by mail from a hotel in Auburn Hills, MI, to be investigated? Could they be concerned by the Michigan State Police investigation that began one month before the hotly contested 2020 election?

Perhaps they’re worried that if an investigation is opened into GBI Strategies, the DOJ may question why Senator Gary Peters, who recently and unexpectedly announced his retirement, and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden each paid $242,133 to GBI Strategies.

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Deal is Reportedly in the Works for the IRS to Share Addresses of Illegal Aliens with ICE

A deal is reportedly underway for the Internal Revenue Service to share tax data, including addresses, of illegal aliens with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the deal has been the subject of “weeks of negotiations,” citing four unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”

The newspaper also obtained leaked portions of a draft of the agreement.

The Post reports:

Under the agreement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement could submit names and addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants to the IRS to cross-reference with confidential taxpayer databases, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of professional reprisals.

Normally, personal tax information — even an individual’s name and address — is considered confidential and closely guarded within the IRS. Unlawfully disclosing tax data carries civil and criminal penalties.

However, tax information may be shared with other federal law enforcement under certain, limited conditions — and typically with approval from a court. It would be unusual, if not unprecedented, for taxpayer privacy law exceptions to be used to justify cooperation with immigration enforcement, the people said.

According to the draft, the data sharing would be limited to “confirming the addresses of known unlawful immigrants who already have been ordered to leave the country.” Additionally, the IRS will only comply with requests submitted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem or Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons directly.

The requests “must include the name and address of each taxpayer, the date of their order for removal and other identifying information that would allow the IRS to verify the taxpayer’s identity,” per the report.

In 1999, the IRS promised illegal aliens that it would not share their data with immigration officials while encouraging them to use the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) program, which had been established three years earlier. It was part of an effort to encourage tax compliance among those not eligible for Social Security numbers, including illegal aliens.

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Federal Judge Could Force IRS To Release Internal Records in Alleged Political ‘Weaponization’ Case

A federal judge could soon rule on whether the Internal Revenue Service falsified records to target companies for tax penalties, according to new court filings on Friday.

Three companies filed a motion on Friday asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to determine whether there is sufficient evidence that the IRS fraudulently “backdated” documents while cracking down on “syndicated conservation easement” schemes, which allow individuals and corporations to offset their taxes by donating land to charitable groups.

The filing is part of a two-year-long Freedom of Information Act case against the IRS. The plaintiffs, Arden Row Assets, Basswood Aggregates, and Delwood Resources, claim IRS agents hit their companies with millions of dollars in tax penalties without proper authorization, and later fraudulently backdated documents to cover up the misconduct.

If the court decides there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing by the IRS, it could force the agency to release internal records related to the case.

Critics of the tax bureau say the case is a prime example of politicized “weaponization” by the IRS, an agency that has faced extensive budget cuts and layoffs by the Trump administration.

“In the emails between the IRS agents, it’s clear that they know they didn’t properly date the documents, and they seem to have no concern about backdating the forms,” Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who is representing the companies suing the IRS, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Rosenstein said it appears that agents were “encouraged to pursue penalties in easement cases” which “may have created pressure to pursue penalties even when they failed to get the required approval.”

Over the past decade, the IRS has launched a crackdown against “syndicated conservation easements,” a tax loophole that allows companies to donate undeveloped land to nonprofit groups for a tax writeoff. The easements have been criticized by some lawmakers who say they’re being abused by companies that buy up low-worth land, obtain inflated land value assessments, and then sell off portions to investors looking for tax breaks.

The lawsuit cited internal IRS emails that appeared to show agents discussing backdating forms that authorized millions of dollars of penalties against the plaintiff companies.

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