When the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, the scandal received scant attention relative to the enormity of what was going on — the systematic intimidation of political opponents of the Obama administration.
By the time it ended — with the settlement of lawsuits, a meager apology from the IRS and no substantive action by Congress to address the problem — it was receiving even less.
But conservatives haven’t forgotten. Progressives shouldn’t either. If they think it can’t happen to them, they haven’t been paying attention.
At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., questioned Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter on the issue. Daines called what happened during the Obama administration “chilling,” and a “fundamental First Amendment issue.” He then asked whether the IRS really needed the detailed personal information that political and social welfare committees disclose to the IRS on Schedule B, which includes the names and amounts given by major donors.
“We don’t need that information to administer the tax laws in a fair and equitable way,” Kautter told the panel. The previous IRS Commissioner and the IRS exempt organizations director have said the same thing.
You might be wondering why donor disclosure is such a problem. After all, isn’t sunlight the best disinfectant?
Eliminating Schedule B makes sense for several reasons.
Given the multiple instances of federal and state governments’ mishandling of confidential donor information, can we trust them with our sensitive information?
Furthermore, we’ve seen countless examples across the decades of Americans being threatened with violence because of their political involvement. That’s why the Supreme Court protected the privacy of donors in NAACP v. Alabama, a 1958 case in which the state was barred from requiring the civil rights organization from turning over its membership roster.
But the problem persists today. In one particularly chilling case, a woman in Arizona received death threats and had to hire round-the-clock security to protect herself and her children because she publicly fought taxpayer-funded subsidies for a Phoenix hockey team.
When that threat of intimidation comes from the government, as it did in the IRS scandal, the risks to our democratic values increase immeasurably.
The bottom line is this: Politicians and government bureaucrats have no business knowing the personal information of those who may be working to oppose them. As the Supreme Court put it in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995: “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” In the age of social media and instant access to information, that ideal is more important than ever.
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Treasury Department and IRS from requiring that the identity of contributors to 501(c) organizations be included in tax returns.
A statutory fix is preferable because it wouldn’t be subject to the whim of changes in the executive branch.
While we wait on Congress to act, the IRS can on its own end the unnecessary collection of this personal information — the requirement is a creature of the IRS, not Congress. The IRS created this monster and it can destroy it.
The goal, as Daines put it, is to “protect anonymous free speech,” whoever the speaker is. That’s what makes the principle of anonymity so profound, and so important. It doesn’t matter which side you’re on — you have the right to engage in political debate without fear of intimidation or retribution from the other side — or the government.
That’s a bedrock American principle, one that predates the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Let’s preserve it today by barring the IRS from gathering the information that greases the wheels of the machinery of intimidation and retribution.
David Barnes is policy manager of Americans for Prosperity.
