I have outlined my personal attack from the IRS in an earlier article which I believed was based solely on my activities with patriot groups throughout the state of North Carolina. The level of outright harassment was evident from the beginning of this ordeal. Now that the IRS has become more blatant in its “intimidation” across the country, I have some advice based on my own experience:
RESIST
The IRS will first try to make you lose your temper so that they will have you recorded as being belligerent. Do not fall for this tactic.
The IRS will try to wear you down by stating that they received the information and will get back to you. Do not fall for this tactic. They will only continue to harass you.
Here is the solution. If the issue is not reviewed and cleared up quickly (one month), stop. Tell them that they have not shown good faith in resolving the issue and that you will be filing a case in US district court to resolve the matter. I filed the case myself and paid the $60 filing fee. Once the court case is put on the docket, a mid to high level IRS employee will contact you and resolve the case. In my particular attack, this person resolved the case in less than two minutes.
David DeGerolamo
Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties?
In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various local Tea Parties across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have reached Tea Parties in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas (we are hearing of more daily). There are several common threads to these letters: all are requesting more information from these independent Tea Parties in regard to their nonprofit 501(c)(4) applications (for this type of nonprofit, donations are not deductible). While some of the requests are reasonable, much of them are strikingly onerous and, dare I say, Orwellian in nature.
What are local Tea Partiers to think with requests like “Please identify your volunteers” or “are there board members or officers who have run or will run for office (including relatives)”? What possible reason would the IRS have for Tea Parties to “name your donors” when said donations are non-deductible? These are just a few of the questions asked by the IRS in these letters, and one cannot help but suspect an intrinsic threat encompassing all these demands.
The other question is the timing of these IRS letters requesting reams of copies and hundreds of hours of work and potentially thousands of dollars in accounting/legal fees (all due in two weeks). Some of these Tea Party groups have not received anything concerning their nonprofit status since 2010 prior to these letters.
These documents are further undermined by a letter sent to the IRS Commissioner Shulman. Signed by six Senators, it requests that the commissioner investigate 501(c)(4) groups to determine whether they are engaging in substantial campaign activity, including opposition to any candidate. Who signed this letter? Senators Schumer, Franken, Udall, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Merkley and Bennet — all Democrats.
