Has anyone noticed that there hasn’t been a torrent of progressive, liberal, etc. organizations coming forward to say that they received excessive scrutiny, too? Why is that? Because they didn’t receive such scrutiny? Because they don’t mind? Because they didn’t file to receive 501(c)(4) status? All of the above? Something else?
Earlier there was a comparison and contrast to the median time it took for approval — conservative organizations averaged 27 mos, while liberal/progressive ones breezed through at 9 mos. I would then hazard a guess by saying, the latter received little to none scrutiny compared to the former.
These are the only 3 I saw. One hopes that the IG looked at the ones flagged with just “other” as the description.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/15/liberal-group-progress-texas-also-received-extra-irs-scrutiny/
Steve
steve, unless I missed it, I don’t think Progress Texas was asked for the names of donors and the amounts. That’s the big question that some people (perhaps this IRS division) believe Citizens United demanded, and was inappropriate to ask under current statute.
The analytical problem is that the IRS was previously scrutinizing potential political issues, likely both on the left and right, but it added an additional screen to target tea party activities that it didn’t seem to know how to process properly once these applications were set aside for additional review.
From glancing at the questions and from the length of the process (479 days), I think Progress Texas was treated unfairly by the IRS, but I don’t know that you can compare that with the accounts in the Inspector General reports of applications still under review for twice that length of time, with more questions, as well as questions that were withdrawn after being sent and replaced with new questions.