Grassley To IRS On NRA – Fight Crime Someplace Else

Originally published on Forbes.com.

Senator Chuck Grassley in his own letter is cautioning the IRS about Senator Ron Wyden’s letter urging the IRS to investigate the NRA. Wyden refers to a report by the Senate Finance Committee Minority Staff – The NRA And Russia – How A Tax-exempt Organization Became a Foreign Asset.

Long Story Short

The report leads off with Maria Butina. Her possible wrong doing is outlined in a DOJ news release in 2018. It boils down to the notion that the Russian Federation was trying to get an in with influential conservative organizations and that there were visits back and forth between Russia and NRA conventions with the possibility that NRA officers were angling for private benefit.

There seems to be plenty to look into and if enough of it proved out, that would jeopardize the NRA’s exempt status, since one of the things exempt organizations are not supposed to do is break the law.

The Grassley Letter

Grassley’s letter makes light of the possible effect of this imbroglio on the exempt status of the NRA. He makes a more important point. Noting that “the IRS should never investigate taxpayers as a result of potential political motives”, he invokes the specter of the interminable IRS scandal.

This decade has already seen the IRS involved in enough controversy around politically-motived tax enforcement, and the IRS should strive mightily to avoid such episodes in the future. As you are well aware, in May 2013 a scandal engulfed the IRS with its partisan enforcement of applications for tax-exempt status under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the tax code, as led by Ms. Lois Lerner.