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With Internal Revenue Service (IRS) coming under fire for admitting to targeting specific Tea Party-supporting groups, it seems that they also targeted liberal-leaning groups as well. In fact, one of those groups even had their tax-exempt status revoked, whereas none of the Tea Party groups lost their 501(c)(4) status.

According to Bloomberg, a group called Emerge America, whose primary goal is to train Democratic women and encourage them to run for office, also came under investigation and received a letter similar to the one sent to the Tea Party groups. Karen Middleton, Emerge America’s president, said that they are now required to be incorporated under section 527 of the tax code which forces them to list all donors.

Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

An Austin, Texas-based group, Progress Texas, received a letter from the IRS in February 2013 when it sought nonprofit status. The letter came from the agency’s Laguna Niguel, California, office, which sent essentially the same queries to Republican-leaning groups.

As with the Tea Party groups, the IRS sought copies of promotional materials, backgrounds of officers, meeting minutes and specifics about activities, such as get-out-the-vote drives, that the organization said it would conduct.

Clean Elections Texas, a Dallas-based group that backs taxpayer funding of elections -- a position that aligns with many Democrats -- also had to answer queries.

“The IRS is finally doing its work, that was my feeling about it,” Liz Wally, the group’s executive director, said yesterday in a telephone interview. Her group was also approved for nonprofit status.

Two law firms that represent 33 Republican-leaning organizations that say they were targeted by the IRS have said none of their clients was rejected for tax-exempt status. Excerpts from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democ
rats-that-fed-tea-party-row.html?alcmpid=politics

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Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and campaign finance watchdog groups are pressing to expand congressional hearings to encompass everything the IRS is doing concerning nonprofits, including whether such groups should be allowed to spend money on political efforts at all.

Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

Political spending by nonprofits incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code has increased since the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L) in 2010 removed limits on independent corporate and union spending and other court rulings paved the way for wealthy individuals to spend unlimited sums in elections.

Outside groups -- including nonprofit social-welfare groups that don’t disclose their donors -- spent $1 billion in the 2012 elections, three times as much as they did four years earlier, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, based in Washington.

“The real problem is that phony 501(c)(4) groups are exploiting the tax laws to protect donors who don’t want to be held accountable for vicious, deceitful political ads,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Same

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