So in this country we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs, we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax. Some of which are really giant firms, you know Koch Industries is a multibillion dollar businesses. So that creates a narrower base because we’ve literally got something like 50 percent of the business income in the U.S. is going to businesses that don’t pay any corporate income tax. They point out [in the report] you could review the boundary between corporate and non-corporate taxation as a way to broaden the base.There was a dust up about it at the time as Koch Industries is privately held and does not publish its tax information. According to the Washington Post the Inspector General of the IRS was to question Goolsbee but nothing ever came of it.
The Koch brothers fund a huge super PAC, Americans for Prosperity. AFP reports they were not hassled by the IRS but smaller Tea Party groups received questionnaires from the IRS asking if they were associated with AFP.
In a post written by John Podhoretz himself at Commentary magazine we read;
As it happens, I know something about the chilling effect of an IRS investigation into a non-profit’s 501 (c)-3 status because in 2009, COMMENTARY (a non-profit) received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service threatening the revocation of the institution’s standing as a non-profit due to a claim that on our website we had crossed the line in the 2008 election from analysis to explicit advocacy of the candidacy of John McCain for president. (Non-profits are not permitted to endorse candidates.) The charge was false—all we had done was reprint a speech delivered at a COMMENTARY event by then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman in which he had endorsed McCain.Then there was Z Street that was denied tax exempt status because of its pro-Israel posture.
FINALLY! Two and a half years after filing a Complaint in federal court seeking relief from the Internal Revenue Service for viewpoint discrimination against our strongly pro-Israel organization, Z STREET has a hearing date in the District of Columbia federal district court on JULY 2, AT 2:30 P.M. Z STREET v. IRS (Douglas H. Shulman, IRS Commissioner)Another example of what the IRS regards as "viewpoint discrimination" would be Cherish Life Ministries that only wants to advocate a pro-life point of view. From Life News;
“The representative was telling me I had to provide information on all aspects of abortion, I couldn’t just educate the church from the pro-life perspective,” he said. “Every time I pressed her on this issue and asked her to clarify her position, she would state that it wasn’t what she was saying, and then, she would repeat it almost the same way.”Again from Life News
“She told me … they were going to deny my application,”,,. “She did get nervous though in the end when I pressed her that I wanted specific information about why I had to educate from a pro-abortion perspective not just pro-life. I explained to her that the Pro-Life Action League even has pro-life in their title and they certainly don’t teach pro-abortion topics and they are still 501(c)(3). I also told her that Planned Parenthood does not teach about pro-life issues yet they are also still a 501(c)(3).”
The Internal Revenue Service is targeting a pro-life Iowa group that acts in part as a watchdog over the Planned Parenthood abortion business. It is refusing to grant nonprofit tax status to the Coalition for Life of Iowa unless it agreed to limit its "picketing" and "protesting" of Planned Parenthood.Should we be surprised? Not Really Obama has politicized the FBI and practically every major department of the government. As Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity puts it, “The connection between Obama’s rhetoric and IRS action seems more than coincidental,”
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