The House of Representatives approved legislation on Wednesday that U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) introduced to protect churches, charities and other nonprofits from disclosing donor information to the IRS.
The Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act, H.R. 5053, would prohibit the IRS from requiring nonprofits to turn over donor lists in response to donor information being improperly released in the past and groups being targeted for their political affiliation.
“(On Tuesday), the House took an important step on our continued march to rein in the IRS and protect taxpayers,” Roskam, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, said. “We voted to eliminate a confidential form the IRS proved incapable of securing. The agency has said it doesn’t even need this form for tax administration in the first place. Either one of these facts should be reason enough to eliminate an onerous regulation. In this case, we have both.”
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that he had worked hard to ban IRS political targeting through the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act, which was signed into law in December.
“But we still have work to do to clean up the IRS and hold it more accountable to the taxpayers it serves,” Brady said. “The Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act continues that critical effort. This bill authored by Congressman Roskam would prohibit the IRS from collecting the identity of people who donate to tax-exempt organizations.”
Brady said that it was revealed during the committee’s investigation into the IRS targeting scandal that certain organizations had not only be singled out for heightened security, but were ordered to turn over their donor lists in some cases.
“During our committee’s IRS political targeting investigation, we learned that the IRS not only singled out certain organizations for heightened scrutiny, but in some cases it even demanded they turn over a list of all their donors,” Brady said. “The bill before us today takes much-needed steps to protect taxpayer identities and ease the compliance burden on tax-exempt organizations.
“Most importantly, the bill helps ensure that Americans can never again be singled out by the IRS for their political beliefs. I’m grateful to Mr. Roskam for his leadership on this important issue, and I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting the passage of this legislation.”
U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said that all Americans should be disturbed that nonprofits, charities and other tax-exempt groups had been a vehicle for government suppression of political adversaries.
“Ever since my committee uncovered the IRS targeting of conservative groups in 2013, more and more information has come to light showing that the IRS can’t be trusted with information about Americans personal or political affiliations,” Issa, the former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said. “In a free society people should be free to criticize government, speak up loudly and do so without living in fear of retribution from their government. The bill passed today will protect citizens by removing this targeting tool from the IRS.”