Why can IRS question your motives?

Opinion: May 21, 2013 at 12:00a.m.

By Matthew Spalding

Heritage Foundation

Across this great land, patriotic Americans are behaving subversively.

We’re quoting from our pocket Constitutions, starting reading groups to discuss our founding documents, even gathering together to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Uncle Sam is not amused.

As leaders of tea party groups have been painfully aware for years, the Internal Revenue Service has given “special” attention to conservative groups.

The Heritage Foundation sounded the alarm on the Obama administration’s hit list nearly a year ago. Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot was singled out by the IRS and the Labor Department after making a sizable donation to Mitt Romney. Who ordered his investigation?

The IRS admits that in recent years it has zeroed in on organizations with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. Further, The Wall Street Journal reports the IRS has also targeted groups that say they are “worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to ’make America a better place to live.’”

Just look at these examples from four different states:

ABC News reports that Jennifer Stefano of Pennsylvania wanted to start a tea party group, but dealing with the IRS “was frightening and that’s why I shut it down. I shut my group down.”

The IRS ordered an Ohio group to answer 35 detailed questions, including to “provide a listing of all your past activities. Indicate the percentage of your time spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100 percent) and the percentage of your funds spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100 percent).”

In Tennessee, Kevin Kookogey was trying to start an educational group called Linchpins of Liberty to teach the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. When he inquired with the IRS in 2011 about the delay in his tax-exempt status, he was told: “We have been waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your and similar organizations.” He is still waiting.

In Virginia, it took Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig two and a half years to get tax-exempt status. He tells The Washington Post the wait had “a very chilling effect” on how much money his group could raise, and thus on how much speech it could generate.

How many groups are under scrutiny? That remains to be seen. President Obama has said that the IRS’s actions were “intolerable and inexcusable” and that “regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong.”

Our federal government was designed to be a neutral arbiter between competing private interests that would protect our liberties. Instead, it has morphed into a permanent interest group of its own.

So here’s a charge to all tea partiers, and indeed all “patriotic” Americans of any political bent: Let’s redouble our efforts — to limit government and promote freedom.

Matthew Spalding is vice president for American studies at The Heritage Foundation and director of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, Washington, D.C. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.