Republicans are demanding an IRS audit of a Boston-based arm of the Clinton Foundation. The group is under fire after admitting to errors in its tax forms that covered up millions in foreign donations, then walking back a pledge to refile its returns.
The Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative, which was later spun off into the Clinton Health Access Initiative, told Reuters in April that it planned to amend its returns after reporters discovered donations that were not disclosed on the charity’s Internal Revenue Service forms.
But a spokeswoman for CHAI told Politico Monday the organization has no intention of refiling its returns by the IRS’ Nov. 16 deadline, raising new questions about the extent of the group’s reporting errors.
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote a letter to the IRS Tuesday demanding the tax agency look into stated discrepancies in the charity’s returns. Priebus filed a formal complaint with the IRS
CHAI failed to disclose any foreign donations from 2009 to 2013, when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, according to a report published earlier this year by the Boston Globe.
The Clinton Foundation was asked to alert the State Department to all new foreign donations as part of an agreement between the charity and the White House that was reached before Clinton was confirmed to her position.
The memorandum of understanding, which was hammered out by foundation officials and signed by Valerie Jarrett, a top White House adviser, included specific guidelines for CHAI.
That arm of the Clinton Foundation was required to report donations if “an existing contributing country elect[ed] to increase materially its commitment” or if a new country decided to contribute.
State Department ethics officials would then look over the proposed donations and clear them for potential conflicts of interest, according to the agreement.
Any agency of a foreign government and any state-owned corporation would fall under the memorandum’s requirements.
CHAI and the Clinton Foundation began filing separate tax returns after 2010, but the provisions of the agreement reportedly still applied to CHAI.
Foreign contributions make up a significant portion of CHAI’s cash flow, which made it a key concern of the White House prior to Clinton’s confirmation.
Five of the seven donors listed as having given more than $25 million to CHAI are affiliated with foreign governments, according to the group’s list of contributors from 2010 to Sept. 2015.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn said the confusion over tax returns is nothing new for the embattled philanthropy.
“This is just [another] example of there being one set of rules for the Clintons and another set for everybody else,” Blackburn told the Washington Examiner. “It always seems to depend on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
The Tennessee Republican led a push in May for an IRS review of the Clinton Foundation’s tax-exempt status amid concerns over the unreported foreign donations.
“The Clinton Foundation and its spinoffs are nothing more than a slush fund that operate under the cloak of philanthropy,” Blackburn said, touting the letter that she and 51 other lawmakers sent to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen this summer.
“The actions taken by the foundation and its affiliates have created an appearance of impropriety and go behind the foundation’s pledge to act primarily in furtherance of charitable causes for which it was granted tax-exempt status,” she added. “Unfortunately, the IRS chose to ignore what is so obvious to hard working American taxpayers.”
A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation referred questions to CHAI, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
The fact that CHAI officials publicly admitted to mistakes dating back to their 2012 and 2013 returns and acknowledged a failure to clear donations with the State Department ethics team, before then declining to fix those forms, could reignite the same level of scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation which dogged the early days of Clinton’s presidential campaign.
CHAI is a massive organization, offering access to cheaper health care around the world.
It brought in nearly $65 million in 2011, $88 million in 2012 and $117 million in 2013, according to CHAI’s 990 nonprofit disclosure forms.
