IRS Harassing the Tea Party?
Sure seems like it. Here is the list of questions the Ohio Tea Party has asked as part of their application, which should be routine, for 501(c)4 status. The Virginia Tea Party had similar requests, including apparently a demand for donor lists and confidential materials which the IRS says will be made public. The latter seems part and parcel of recent initiative on the Left (seen also in the whole Heartland fiasco) to out confidential donors of Conservative and libertarian organizations while demanding no similar transparency of organizations on the Left.
By the way, I am President of a 501(c)4 organization (basically a trade group) and I can say with some authority that we never have received any sort of parallel set of questions from the IRS vis a vis our status, so this is either a very new requirement or one especially crafted to apply only to the Tea Party. I can say from all too much experience that having a Federal agency sit on a request for 9 months and then suddenly demand incredible amounts of work in just a few days from the private party is absolutely typical.
