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Definitely not great behavior. The idea this was purely an anti-conservative thing when OSS advocacy is on this list is where my eyes glaze over though. Just on

by rtpg 8y ago

Definitely not great behavior. The idea this was purely an anti-conservative thing when OSS advocacy is on this list is where my eyes glaze over though. Just on its face there is a lot of evidence in the other direction >Ryun has stated he believes that Greenhouse Solutions benefited from its name (although the quick approval might also be due to the fact that Greenhouse Solutions was already operating as a nonprofit and was already on-file with the IRS.) Like “conservative claims bias (but here is the real explanation).” Might as well place “claims to be innocent “ in the profile of every person in Shawshank The insistence of people bringing up this thing as a conservative thing only when there were liberal groups also being targeted (There could have been a proper bipartisan effort against this!) is mind-boggling.

oTTjRQxkTz 8y ago
In the TIGTA report from 2017, the Senate Finance Committee (and the IRS itself) found that most, but not all, of the potentially political applications set aside for scrutiny by the IRS were Tea Party and conservative groups. The committee also found that the IRS used names and policy positions in order to identify groups for scrutiny. I think there is evidence to say there was an anti-conservative bias. see TIGTA report: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/201710054fr.pdf https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/2017...
humanrebar 8y ago
I don't care to rehash the argument, but targeting nonprofits based on their names is at best arbitrary and uneven. Maybe it was accidental that conservative groups felt targeted. But given that non-profits aren't in the business of lawsuits, it's a due process concern when the IRS is arbitrary. Some sort of heuristic based on random sampling or less political profiling (location, governing structure, association with known tax evaders) makes more sense.
- rtpg 8y ago
  Yep, I had never really dug too much into this (partly because I would hear about it from people I know to act in bad faith), but I agree on the arbitrariness being a due process concern. I do feel like "random sampling" would make a lot more sense here. Other profiling feels like it might end up in the same spot though. Really the ideal thing is to improve the processes/rules and give enough resources to where they don't feel the need to have to pull fringe-political-shaped needles out of haystacks in the hopes that those needles happen to also be non-compliant shaped. Incentives are all weird here, and we end up in these messes. And some people take advantage of that to create a narrative that makes it _even harder_ to solve the real problem (imagine asking for more resources for compliance after this "IRS is being used for politics" stuff)

by rtpg 8y ago

oTTjRQxkTz 8y ago

In the TIGTA report from 2017, the Senate Finance Committee (and the IRS itself) found that most, but not all, of the potentially political applications set aside for scrutiny by the IRS were Tea Party and conservative groups. The committee also found that the IRS used names and policy positions in order to identify groups for scrutiny. I think there is evidence to say there was an anti-conservative bias. see TIGTA report: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/201710054fr.pdf https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/2017...

humanrebar 8y ago

I don't care to rehash the argument, but targeting nonprofits based on their names is at best arbitrary and uneven. Maybe it was accidental that conservative groups felt targeted. But given that non-profits aren't in the business of lawsuits, it's a due process concern when the IRS is arbitrary. Some sort of heuristic based on random sampling or less political profiling (location, governing structure, association with known tax evaders) makes more sense.

rtpg 8y ago
Yep, I had never really dug too much into this (partly because I would hear about it from people I know to act in bad faith), but I agree on the arbitrariness being a due process concern. I do feel like "random sampling" would make a lot more sense here. Other profiling feels like it might end up in the same spot though. Really the ideal thing is to improve the processes/rules and give enough resources to where they don't feel the need to have to pull fringe-political-shaped needles out of haystacks in the hopes that those needles happen to also be non-compliant shaped. Incentives are all weird here, and we end up in these messes. And some people take advantage of that to create a narrative that makes it _even harder_ to solve the real problem (imagine asking for more resources for compliance after this "IRS is being used for politics" stuff)