If you wonder why Cincinnati became the go-to IRS office for non-profit exemption review, the answer’s really simple:
The IRS was having trouble hiring people for low-level positions in field offices like New York or Atlanta — the kinds of workers that typically reviewed applications by nonprofits, Owens said.
The answer to this was simple: Cincinnati.
The city had a history of being able to hire people at low federal grades, which in 1995 paid between $19,704 and $38,814 a year — almost the same as those federal grades paid in New York City or Chicago.
[snip]
So in 1995, the Exempt Organizations division started to centralize. Instead of field offices evaluating applications for nonprofits in each region, those applications would all be sent to one mailing address, a post-office box in Covington, Ky. Then a central office in Cincinnati would review all the applications.
Almost inadvertently, because people there were willing to work for less than elsewhere, Cincinnati became ground zero for nonprofit applications.
And then, thanks to a reorganization in the late 1990s – early 2000s, the IRS started reducing its number of employees (from over 100,000 to slightly under 90,000). With fewer people came less attention to what was happening in field offices and reassignment of lawyers to special projects rather than ongoing practices like the Exempt Organizations reviews.
So far, then, it seems that the IRS snafu is more a management and resource problem than it is a partisan political one. Does that fact matter to Republicans? Hardly.
“it seems that the IRS snafu is more a management and resource problem than it is a partisan political one”
I think some would speculate that it could be both, but not running in the direction that’s presented.
Like could it be that this snafu is an unintended consequence of ill-conceived and detrimental downsizing of government?
I say this because there is speculation that some conservatives have had the agenda to squeeze government to the point where it is ineffective or actually harmful, & get people to hate it, and then you can more easily “drown it in a bathtub”.
Of course I’m still back to the idea that all this tax-exempt crap doesn’t make sense these days. I’m not sure any group should get it. Not saying we should squeeze regressive taxes out of small struggling charity operations. Clearly I think taxes should be more progressive to prevent that.
But the other thing is that through everything I hear about this controversy, all I keep thinking is… but wait, why are not ALL of these non-profit tax exempt applications heavily scrutinized?
Shouldn’t they be?
I see a problem with targeting one type for scrutiny, and then giving others a wide berth, in the application process.
But ideally, I’d like to see them ALL heavily scrutinized!
Why is nobody talking about that?
Oh right, because then we’d have to discuss government offices being understaffed to the point where they have to triage applications and let a lot of scam applications fall through & get away with not paying taxes.
Seems our society has somehow forgotten about tipping points in general. You can only downsize so much before what you’re saving is costing you big by losing out on the value the upsized had brought you.
Long-term benefits & goals seem to be another thing our society has abandoned. In fact, not just abandoned, but it seems it’s almost rigged now if you try to think about the long-term, you’re punished in the short-term!
I’m with you. They should all be subjected to the same process, no passes. But to do that you’d have to add personnel to the IRS, something even our Democratic President wouldn’t want to suggest. As to the Republicans agreeing, fat chance.
It should be a working Federal Election Commission that certifies whether these organizations do what they claim they do, not the IRS. Unfortunately by law the FEC’s membership must be three Rs and three Ds, which means deadlock. That means the verification has devolved to the IRS.
Well sounds like mayhem.
Thinking about the FEC… sounds just like more B.S. and even more reason to just do away with it.
What exactly even is the thinking here?
Seems much more efficient to just tax them, and use the taxes for public good anyway.
If that makes less charities… well then we’ll know that most of those charities weren’t really truly charities in the first place, were they?
Maybe I’m jaded, but I’m skeptical about charities in general. But to explain my myriad of reasons for this, it would take about 15 paragraphs, and I’m sure someone else has already laid it out somewhere & covered all my cynical suspicions, I just need to find it. ha ha