U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups
Social welfare groups, trade associations won’t have to list donors, department says
WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department will allow some nonprofit groups to provide less information about donors on their tax forms in a win for conservative organizations engaged in politics.
Until now, nonprofit groups, including charities and trade associations, had to list contributors who give at least $5,000 on what is known as Schedule B. The IRS received the complete version, and the groups publicly released redacted forms without identifying information about donors.
Under the change announced late Monday, charities and political groups still must provide the names and addresses of donors, but other nonprofits don’t. Organizations that no longer need to provide the information include social welfare organizations, which can engage in politics and don’t have to disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission. Social welfare groups have been active across the political spectrum, but conservative ones have been particularly involved in politics.
Some of the largest groups affected include an arm of the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity, a group tied to billionaires Charles and David Koch.
“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “This change will in no way limit transparency. The same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.”
According to the Trump administration, the IRS didn’t make systematic use of the information. But the previously available redacted forms did often reveal useful information, such as whether a particular group is supported by just one or two major donors. Under Monday’s change, that information would presumably still be available publicly. It appears that the rules would require the new version submitted to IRS to match the redacted version released under the old rules.
For the past few years, Republicans have been examining the Schedule B requirements, questioning how useful the information is to the IRS and arguing that donors could face harassment if the information is inadvertently released.
In 2016, the House passed a bill to eliminate the requirement, but the Obama administration opposed it and it didn’t become law. The IRS has previously considered scaling back the requirement but hadn’t done so until Monday. The donor-disclosure rules for charities and political groups are contained in statutes and can’t be changed by the administration.
“The IRS’s decision is a move in the right direction to end activist regulators’ culture of intimidation to silence political speech,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) “More and more states were using these documents to chill political discourse, rather than encourage it.”
Democrats blasted the decision and warned that the IRS would have one less tool to figure out whether groups are complying with the law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said he will vote against President Donald Trump’s pick to run the IRS unless he promises to reverse the move.
“President Trump’s late-night giveaway to shady donors and interest groups makes dark Continue reading: U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups - WSJ
