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Posts Tagged ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’
May 16th, 2016 at 11:52 am
Congressional Reform Legislation Targeting IRS Abuse Deserves Our Support
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In the Mario Lopez interview immediately below and a recent Liberty Update piece noting a welcome federal court victory, CFIF continues to emphasize and oppose ongoing official governmental efforts to intimidate and silence conservative donors:

[P]ublic officials and vindictive private citizens persist in demanding access to membership records and donor lists of conservative and libertarian organizations whose missions they deem unacceptable.  Anyone requiring confirmation need only look to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) harassment of pro-Israel and conservative nonprofit groups, or California citizens driven from their jobs simply for advocating a position on marriage that even a majority of state voters at the ballot box.

A recent federal court ruling in California vindicates donor privacy and the logic underlying [the Supreme Court ruling in] NAACP v. Alabama.”

On the same note, it’s worth highlighting Congressional legislation led primarily by Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam (R – Illinois) targeting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) abuses that deserves our support.  Specifically, the House of Representatives recently passed a set of reforms to stop IRS abuses, improve protections for everyday American taxpayers and finally hold IRS officials accountable for official misconduct.  Here’s what the package of reforms would accomplish:

  1. Force the IRS to implement the Taxpayer Bill of Rights;
  2. Prevent the IRS from targeting donors to nonprofit organizations;
  3. Prohibit IRS officials from using private email accounts to conduct official government business;
  4. End IRS abuses of taxpayer privacy protections;
  5. Allow social welfare nonprofit organizations to self-declare their tax-exempt status rather than subject themselves to politicized IRS stalling tactics;
  6. Allow organizations to appeal IRS denials of their tax-exempt status applications;  and
  7. Immediately terminate IRS employees found guilty of targeting Americans on the basis of political bias.

It’s a good sign that IRS abuses and other governmental efforts at the federal, state and local levels targeting Americans – especially conservative and libertarian Americans – who simply wish to exercise their First Amendment rights have been exposed.

But that’s not enough.  We can’t let the opportunity to actually change the atmosphere in which these abuses occurred, and prevent similar abuses going forward.  Americans of every political persuasion should therefore contact their elected representatives and the White House to demand their support for these common-sense reforms.