Freedom Line Blog

In our Liberty Update this week, we highlight the latest illegal leak of thousands of supposedly confidential Internal Revenue Service (IRS) taxpayer returns spanning over 15 years, confirming that the partisan and power-hungry IRS simply cannot be trusted to safeguard our sensitive records, let alone to begin collecting sensitive private information from nonprofit organizations on donors who contribute to them in violation of the First Amendment.

Getting to the substance of the ProPublica/IRS leaked documents themselves, former Senator Phil Gramm and U.S. Policy Metrics partner Mike Solon explain in The Wall Street Journal how there’s nothing scandalous in the least in what they reveal:

ProPublica’s ‘blockbuster’ story showing that the wealthy ‘pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year, looks at first like a stunning revelation.  But the whole tempest plops into a teapot once you ask yourself:  How much of the total growth in the value of my home, retirement funds and business did I pay federal income taxes on last year?  The answer is none.  Nobody pays federal wealth taxes in America, but ProPublica and its Democratic allies are using stolen tax returns to try to change that.”

As they correctly conclude, suddenly imposing a nonsensical “wealth tax” would not only be unfair, but destructive:

Proponents of a federal property tax on wealth offer guarantees and protections that they will only tax the superrich like Mr. Buffett, promising not to touch your retirement plan, home, farm or business.  But the federal income tax started out only taxing the superrich like John D. Rockefeller.  The same politicians who promise to protect you from the federal wealth tax voted to impose income taxes on ‘wealthy’ Social Security retirees with an annual incomes above $25,000.  And these are the same politicians who are proposing to tax your businesses and farms at 43.4% when you die, before they take another 40% in death taxes.  In taxing wealth we eat the nation’s seed corn.  That may be worth it to politicians who want power, but for most Americans a wealth tax, whether they have wealth or not, would mean fewer jobs, lower wages and less opportunity for human flourishing.”

Well said.

In this era of increased harassment and persecution of people on the basis of political viewpoints and First Amendment expression, there’s actually good news to report.

In fact, that positive development comes from none other than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which few people typically consider a font of good news.

Specifically, the IRS just announced a proposed rule to stop requiring nonprofit organizations to file what’s known as a Form 990 Schedule B, which exposes sensitive donor information not only to the federal government and potential rogues like former IRS official Lois Lerner, but also people who seek to access and use that information to target people on the basis of political belief.

As we at CFIF have long asserted, this welcome move will help protect the privacy of American citizens, which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in NAACP v. Alabama (1958) is critical to preservation and exercise of the First Amendment’s rights to free speech, freedom of association and freedom to petition government:

Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly.  It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech…  This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations…

The Supreme Court in that seminal ruling rightly drew a straight-line connection between privacy of one’s associations and donations and the ability to exercise one’s First Amendment freedoms:

[R]evelation of the identity of its rank-and-file members has exposed these members to economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility.  Under these circumstances, we think it apparent that compelled disclosure of petitioner’s Alabama membership is likely to affect adversely the ability of petitioner and its members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to advocate, in that it may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure. 

That logic applies with even greater force today, as we’ve witnessed time after time, because of the modern ability to instantly identify, locate and stalk people whose political views one finds disagreeable.

As we’ve further noted, the IRS acknowledges that it doesn’t even use the collected information for any substantive purpose in enforcing the nation’s tax laws, and the IRS isn’t even the agency in charge of enforcing so-called “campaign finance reform” laws in any case.  Accordingly, the information only serves to expose people to potential targeting.

CFIF enthusiastically supports this IRS decision, which will help protect the right of American citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights.

ALEXANDRIA, VA – In welcome news, the U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) announced yesterday evening that the IRS will finally cease requiring certain nonprofit organizations to file “Schedule B” forms that list sensitive personal information like the names, addresses and other identifying information about private citizens who donate to those organizations.

In response, Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) President Jeffrey Mazzella issued the following statement:

“As many Americans are all too aware, recent years have witnessed an increase in assaults against our First Amendment freedoms of speech and association.  In some cases, the IRS has collected and leaked private information on contributors to 501(c) nonprofit organizations contained in mandatory Schedule B forms that by law were to remain confidential.  And across America, hyper-partisan government state-level officials have demanded Schedule B forms and confidential donor information contained therein as part of their campaign to harass organizations and donors with whom they disagree politically.

“With this announcement, the IRS and Treasury are acting on the acknowledgment that Schedule B information is irrelevant to its handling of tax filings, and serves no substantive purpose. In this era of persecution of private citizens for their political beliefs, together with the IRS’s admission that it can’t guarantee the confidentiality of the information contained on the Schedule B, this decision is welcome news.

“We at CFIF applaud the Trump Administration Treasury Department and IRS for their leadership and doing the right thing by eliminating the Schedule B form filing requirement for many nonprofit 501(c) organizations.”

CFIF has spearheaded the broad conservative and libertarian coalition to eliminate the Schedule B from filing requirement, including, among other efforts, coordinating a letter to President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin earlier this year signed by more than 60 influential organizations and individuals urging executive action to accomplish that end.

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