Gee Byron. seem like so many things, the IRS problem was not the way the right wing spun it...

Groups tried to claim tax exempt status when they did not qualify... then cried when they were caught..

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/politics/irs-targeting-tea-party-liberals-democrats.html

WASHINGTON — A federal watchdog investigating whether the Internal Revenue Service unfairly targeted conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status said that the agency also scrutinized organizations associated with liberal causes from 2004 to 2013.

The findings by the Treasury Department’s inspector general mark the end of a political firestorm that embroiled the I.R.S. in controversy, led to the ouster of its commissioner and prompted accusations the tax collection agency was being used as a political weapon by the Obama administration.

The exhaustive report, which examined nine years worth of applications for tax-exempt status, comes after a similar audit in 2013 found that groups with conservative names like “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12” were unfairly targeted for further review.

The new report found that the I.R.S. was also inappropriately targeting progressive-leaning groups. While the investigation does not specify the political affiliations of the groups, names that were f**gged included the words “Progressive,” “Occupy,” “G***n E****y,” and Acorn — the acronym for the now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The I.R.S. came under fire for its aggressive questioning of conservative groups in 2013. After a surge in applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012, the agency acknowledged that it began singling out terms such as “Tea Party” and “patriot” as a shortcut for determining if organizations were actually engaging in social welfare, which would qualify them for tax-exempt status, or if they might be political organizations.



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To receive nonprofit status a group must be “primarily engaged in the promotion of social welfare,” according to I.R.S. rules. Such organizations can engage in some political activity “so long as, in the aggregate, these nonexempt activities are not its primary activities.”


But now it appears that the I.R.S. was an equal offender.

“This report shows the I.R.S. deep scrutiny of political groups is in fact bipartisan, it is liberal and conservative groups that the I.R.S. has been targeting,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

“After years of baseless claims and false accusations it is my hope Republicans will finally put an end to this witch hunt and admit that their attacks on the I.R.S. were nothing but political grandstanding on behalf of special interests at the expense of American taxpayers,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.