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Post by avordvet on Oct 6, 2016 4:44:27 GMT -5
IRS subjects tea party groups to new round of scrutiny, publicizes tax return dataBy Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 4, 2016 The IRS‘ battle against holdout tea party groups is heating up again, after the tax agency promised it would begin processing their long-delayed applications, but sent a new round of prodding questions demanding still more information. More jarringly, the IRS then publicly released one of the sets of questions it sent to the Texas Patriots Tea Party — a move the group’s lawyer says puts secret taxpayer return information, supposed to be protected, out in the public. Tax experts say the IRS may be on safe legal ground, since the filing was made as part of a court case, and that’s one of the few narrow exceptions to strict IRS privacy laws. Still, the move to release the information has inflamed an already tense class action legal battle between the IRS and tea party groups who feel the agency is still targeting them more than three years after it promised to cease. “The IRS has taken the unprecedented step of publicly filing actual return information,” said Edward Greim, who is handling the case on behalf of more than 400 groups targeted by the IRS. He said the questions asked by the IRS show the agency has not ceased the intrusive questioning that landed it in trouble in the first place back in 2013. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/4/irs-subjects-tea-party-groups-to-new-round-of-scru/
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Post by avordvet on Nov 14, 2016 16:53:51 GMT -5
IRS denies tea party groups after long wait for decision on tax-exempt status By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times, Sunday, November 13, 2016 Nearly seven years after it applied to the IRS for nonprofit status, the Albuquerque Tea Party has finally been given a decision: Denied. The tax agency, under orders from a federal judge, is belatedly tackling the remaining tea party cases that it delayed for years, and so far the tea party isn’t doing well. Only one of the three groups in the case was approved, and the other two, including Albuquerque, got notices of proposed denials last week. The applicants will have a chance to appeal, but the denials aren’t sitting well with the groups, whose attorney said it’s more evidence that the IRS continues to single out the tea party for abuse. “It is clear that we still have an IRS that is corrupt and incapable of self-correction,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented a number of tea party groups in a case against the tax agency. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/13/irs-denies-tea-party-groups-after-long-wait-for-de/
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