Editorial: The IRS scandal: Profiles in profling : Stltoday

Editorial: The IRS scandal: Profiles in profling : Stltoday

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Under IRS rules, (c)4s could not donate money directly to candidates, but could donate half of their income on certain “educational activities” without reporting it to the Federal Election Commission. Direct or indirect, if a corporation is buying an attack ad, it’s a distinction without a difference.

In 2010, (c)4s spent some $89 million on political campaigns, 83 percent of it for Republican causes. That went up to $250 million in the 2012 election cycle and the percentage stayed roughly the same. Studies have traced much of the tea party funding to corporate-funded 501(c)4s.

So if you’re an IRS investigator in Cincinnati, charged with examining the legitimacy of tax-exempt organizations, you decide to hunt where the ducks are. You think, “Most of this money is going to conservative causes. There’s a lot of stuff with ‘tea party’ and ‘patriot’ in it. Let’s check ‘em out.”

Like a cop in Missouri stopping black drivers 70 percent more often than white, you profile. Like former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum and U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who want to focus on Muslims in terrorist investigations, you profile. Like Missouri GOP chairman Ed Martin, who once observed, “if there’s a bunch of Mexicans out there, I guess some of them are probably not legal.” You profile. As George Clooney said in “Up in the Air,” “I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”

It doesn’t make it right, but the guess here is that nearly everybody profiles, at least a little bit. But the IRS can’t. Not only is it unethical, unfair and remarkably stupid politically, it undermines confidence in the tax system. There’s little enough of that already.