Religious and secular advocacy groups jointly called for greater clarity by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Jan. 29 regarding nonprofits and political activity.
In a rare combined front, leaders of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Public Citizen and the Center for American Progress met at the National Press Club in Washington to discuss ways the tax agency could better help nonprofits know what they can and cannot do under the law.
“Something needs to change,” said Dan Busby, president of ECFA. “We agree that clear and brighter lines must be adopted.”
In 2013 a commission appointed by the ECFA issued a report recommending that clergy should be able to say “whatever they believe is appropriate” from the pulpit without fear of IRS reprisal. Current IRS rules dating to 1954 permit clergy to address issues but prohibit candidate endorsements.
But those rules are routinely broken with little or no consequence.
Michael Batts, who chaired the ECFA’s commission on accountability and policy for religious organizations, said the IRS should hesitate to enforce some of its current rules that could cause constitutional and public relations problems.
Exit strategy
“The IRS itself needs an exit strategy, and churches and charities need freedom of speech and the freedom to exercise religion,” Batts said.
Erik Stanley, a lawyer for ADF, said IRS laws about “indirect” campaigning are too vague and the IRS is not enforcing its rules about direct campaigning. He said some 4,000 “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” pastors have self-reported to the IRS that they have talked about candidates during a worship service.
In 2013 a Treasury Department inspector general determined that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” when questioning some applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party and other groups. Franklin Graham complained when the organizations he leads — the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and Samaritan’s Purse — were audited after the BGEA ran election-related ads.
Although all the groups at the Press Club event agreed on the need for more clarity from the IRS, they differ in the specifics of how its rules should be changed.
Ezra Reese, a member of the drafting committee of Public Citizen’s Bright Lines Project, worried that some nonprofits might take advantage of rules supported by the ECFA to fund more issue-oriented ads.
But differences aside, the lack of clarity is creating confusion for a range of nonprofits, said Alex DeMots, vice president and deputy general counsel for the Center for American Progress.
“It’s just bad public policy for a … charity or church … to have to hire a lawyer to figure out what it can and can’t do.”
(Religion News Service)
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