The Associated Press reveals another pattern in the IRS’s targeting of conservative and Christian organizations:
There’s an irony in the Internal Revenue Service’s crackdown on conservative groups.
The nation’s tax agency has admitted to inappropriately scrutinizing smaller tea party organizations that applied for tax-exempt status, and senior Treasury Department officials were notified in the midst of the 2012 presidential election season that an internal investigation was underway. But the IRS largely maintained a hands-off policy with the much larger, big-budget organizations on the left and right. . .
Why would the IRS leave the big guys alone? I think Ed Morrissey has the explanation: the big guys have the resources to defend themselves.
If you were looking to prevent abuse of the tax code by bogus tax-exempt application, you would start with the biggest applicants, because those are potentially the biggest abusers. On the other hand, if you were looking to suppress as much Tea Party activity as possible, you wouldn’t waste your time on a few well-funded organizations that could fight back, you would concentrate on suppressing the small grassroots organizations that had no recourse. And we know now which route they chose.
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