IRS Apologizes For Delaying Pro-Israel Group’s Application For Tax Exempt Status For 7 Years, Revealing Troubling Government Bias and Harassment

Last updated on: February 2, 2018 at 2:16 pm by Mark Meckler

IRS Apologizes For Delaying Pro-Israel Group’s Application For Tax Exempt Status For 7 Years, Revealing Troubling Government Bias and Harassment 2018-02-02T14:16:50-06:00 Mark Meckler

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Here’s a press release you probably won’t read about in the main stream media. The Department of Justice announced it settled with a non-profit corporation which educates people about Israel and the Middle East named Z Street. This, in fact, was the first IRS viewpoint discrimination case that was filed.

In the Wall Street Journal, Lori Lowenthal Marcus explained she started Z Street “in 2009 to educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel’s defense against terror,” she wrote. “We applied for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code in December 2009—a process that usually takes three to six months.”

You probably already know the punchline. They waited and waited, without getting approval. Finally, in 2010, Z Street’s lawyer called the IRS and found an agent there who actually told the truth.

“Z Street’s application was getting special scrutiny, the agent said, because it was related to Israel. Some applications for tax-exempt status were being sent to a special office in Washington for review of whether the applicants’ policy positions conflicted with those of the Obama administration,” Marcus wrote.

The Department of Justice just announced that it settled the case:

The Department of Justice today announced that it has entered into a settlement with Z Street, a non-profit corporation dedicated to educating the public about various issues related to Israel and the Middle East, pending approval by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Z Street alleged that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) applied heightened scrutiny to applications for tax-exempt status received from organizations connected in any way to Israel, and applied this policy to Z Street’s application, resulting in delay. The settlement agreement includes an apology from the IRS to Z Street for the delayed processing of the group’s application for tax-exempt status.

“Tax exemption eligibility should be based on whether an organization’s activities fulfill requirements of the law, not a group’s policy positions or the name chosen to reflect those views,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman. “The attorneys at the Department of Justice work hard to ensure that all Americans receive equal treatment under the law. Today’s settlement further illustrates this commitment.”

Call me a cynic, but I’m not impressed. The IRS abuse of American citizens is one of the most egregious violations of public trust I’ve ever witnessed. They got caught, but only because the founder was an attorney who was married to an attorney. She concludes:

To learn the truth, we fought in the courts for seven lonely years—defeating IRS arguments that it didn’t have to obey the First Amendment, that it was immune from the suit, and that it wasn’t obliged to produce in discovery any documents revealing why its employees did what they did. During the seven years Z Street’s application was frozen, it couldn’t raise funds. If my husband and I weren’t lawyers, able to pursue justice without getting paid, there’s no way we could have succeeded.

When Z Street’s creation was announced, thousands sought to join. Then the IRS attempted to kill us. No lawsuit can remedy that assault, as the IRS knew. The settlement gives us the truth, but we can’t get back our seven years.

I’m very grateful to people who put their necks and their money on the line to pursue truth, even if it’s a lonely endeavor. And I get that more than most. As many of you know, my organization Citizens for Self-Governance funded a successful lawsuit against the IRS as well. In October 2017, the federal government finally admitted they targeted patriotic Americans and agreed to settle the class-action lawsuit in Ohio and a tea party challenge in the District of Columbia. I’m very thankful for these wins in the courts. However, this is merely the first step in showing the public how the IRS was turned into a political weapon against Americans.

I’m very gratified to see justice finally being done.

Matthew G. Bisanz [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html), FAL or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Hat Tip: Tax Prof Blog

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