Heritage
Foundation
IRS
Holds Off -- for Now -- on Rules to Restrict Political Groups
Amy
Payne
May
23, 2014
Any
day that the Obama administration halts its regulatory overreach is a
good day – even if it won’t last forever.
Yesterday,
the IRS announced it would hold off until next year on new rules that
would have restricted the activities of nonprofit groups. The
administration had been working on these behind the scenes since last
year. But after the agency’s targeting of conservative groups –
based on their ideological leanings – came to light, it caused an
uproar.
Heritage
legal expert Hans von Spakovsky told The Foundry:
The
announcement by the IRS that it intends to rethink its proposed rules
on political activity by advocacy organizations is welcome news.
These rules would have severely restricted their First Amendment
rights and violated Supreme Court precedent. They were an attempt to
implement the “inappropriate criteria” disgraced IRS official
Lois Lerner used to target tea party and other conservative
organizations.
It’s
at least somewhat refreshing that the agency paid attention to a
massive outpouring of criticism. Von Spakovsky had noted recently:
By
February 27, 2014, the deadline for public comments, the IRS had
received more than 150,000 comments—the vast majority of them
negative—which is a record number for an IRS rulemaking. In fact,
according to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, this was more than
double the number of public comments that the Treasury Department and
the IRS had received for all of their “draft proposals over the
last seven years.”
Why
were people so up in arms? As von Spakovsky said, these rules would
institutionalize the types of practices the IRS had been using to
target organizations inappropriately – which were violating
Americans’ First Amendment rights. True to the administration’s
pattern, the rules would have gone beyond the IRS’s authority, as
well.
“The
IRS should not attempt to regulate in areas beyond its expertise and
authority,” von Spakovsky said in his analysis of the proposed
rules, noting that the agency “is ill-equipped to take on the role
of political arbiter that it seems so eager to assume.”
But
be warned: IRS officials said their rewrite is “certainly is not
starting over and certainly not starting from scratch,” reports
Politico. The new proposal should come out next year, and Americans
will have to be ready to defend their freedoms – again.
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