Mediaboss Marketing

LIBERTY TWP.

Its been 11 months since the IRS admitted they had unfairly targeted particular politically active and conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt nonprofit status, and four years since Liberty Twp. Tea Party applied for that status.

On Monday, members of the tea party group received an update on its lawsuit that prompted scandal within the IRS. The IRS is still being scrutinized for targeting groups applying for 501c3 and 501c4 tax-exempt status as committee hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., are still ongoing.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit conservative legal organization that operates on donations, filed suit last year against the IRS on behalf of the Liberty Twp. Tea Party and 40 other conservative clients in 22 states.

In an exclusive interview with the Journal-News, Jordan Sekulow, ACLJ executive director, said the Liberty Twp. Tea Party is one of 11 tea party groups that have yet to get an answer on the status of its 501c3 application.

Effectively, the IRS stalled these applicants out, he said. A lot of these groups we represent, not all of them, this effectively shut them down. Some reorganized later on because they realized what happened.

The IRS admitted last year that specific groups, based on key words in their nonprofit request applications, were targeted for closer scrutiny. Most of the groups were right-leaning groups, such as ones with tea party or patriot in their names. The issues started in the Cincinnati office, but Sekulow said it was a system-wide problem that went all the way to the top, and it was unfair to blame people in Cincinnati for when it was Washington bureaucrats who was making it impossible for the people (in the Cincinnati and similar offices) to get the job done.

The Journal-News reached out to the IRS for comment, but IRS spokeswoman Jennifer Jenkins declined to comment, saying that agency rules prevent employees from discussing confidential matters of a persons or organizations tax status.

The Liberty Twp. Tea Party was founded in summer 2009 and applied for the 501c3 tax-exempt status in May 2010. Liberty Twp. Tea Party member Susan McLaughlin said its been frustrating to have to wait.

The inability of the IRS to make a timely decision, their intrusive illegal politically motivated questioning that went what was beyond reasonable proves to us that our bureaucracies are bloated and our representatives have failed miserably in controlling the agencies they have created, she said. Our right to free speech and assembly has been abridged.

Read the original post:
Liberty Twp. Tea Party one of 11 without yes or no on tax-exempt status