The Washington Times published an article about how almost 10% of tea party donors were subject to IRS audits, well above the national average of around 1%. From the article (House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS):
Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.
“The committee uncovered new information indicating that after groups provided the information to the IRS, nearly one in 10 donors were subject to audit,” Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday. “The abuse of discretion and audit selection must be identified and stopped,” he said.
The article continues:
Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, asked the IRS to review the names on those lists to see whether any had been audited. The IRS reported back that 10 percent were audited — substantially higher than the average rate of 1 percent of average Americans who are audited each year.
Mr. Boustany said he has asked the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ chief watchdog, to look at how the IRS Exempt Organizations Division decided whom to audit. He said the GAO review is underway and demanded that Mr. Koskinen offer investigators full cooperation.
“IRS has long insisted that Americans should not worry about political targeting at your agency because the IRS has layers of internal protections to guard against it. But in the course of our investigation, however, we found that Lois Lerner acted in defiance of these internal protections,” Mr. Boustany said.
This is outrageous. No American, left, right or independent should feel the full weight of the United States government come down on them simply because they choose to support ideologies that they believe will advance the social welfare of this country.
Donor disclosure is supposed to be a method of preventing corruption, not a guidebook on who to mire in investigations and audits.
