IRS Decision to Grant on “Social Welfare” Status of Crossroads GPS is Complete Abdication of Agency’s Duty

 Statement by Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer

The reported decision by the IRS to grant “social welfare” status to Crossroads GPS is a complete abdication of the agency’s duty to enforce the tax laws. The decision was revealed today by the Center for Responsive Politics.

By no stretch of the imagination can Crossroads GPS be considered a “social welfare” organization. It is a political operation – the brainchild of political operative Karl Rove as a means to provide secrecy for donors who want to influence elections. Since 2010, Crossroads GPS has spent tens of millions of dollars on campaign ads to elect Republicans to Congress.  It receives multi-million dollar donations to fund those campaign ads, but it does not disclose the names of those donors, claiming that it has a right to shield its donors from disclosure as a “social welfare” organization.

A credulous and passive IRS should never have accepted that claim. By doing so, the IRS has licensed the ability of Crossroads GPS and other so-called “social welfare” organizations to use the tax laws to continue to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars of undisclosed contributions in federal elections.

The IRS has failed to do its job to enforce the tax laws, which say that “social welfare” organizations must be “operated exclusively” for the promotion of social welfare activities. These are activities that do not include spending money to influence elections. The IRS also has failed the American people who will continue to be denied information they have a right to know about the sources of money being spent to influence their votes.