More than 120,000 Americans have submitted comments to the IRS concerning its latest proposal to restrict 501(C)(4) non-profit social welfare organizations. That total may be the most generated by a proposed IRS rule since President Carter was in the White House and the tax agency considered a proposal to impose unreasonable restrictions on Christian schools. That proposed IRS rule shook millions of evangelical Protestants out of their decades-long hibernation from participating in the political process. The surge of new recruits to the conservative cause that followed was a major factor in President Reagan‘s 1980 election.
It is important to understand that the present IRS proposal was being developed secretly even before the public learned in 2013 that the agency had systematically targeted and harassed hundreds of Tea Party, conservative and evangelical groups seeking non-profit status in the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.
