Report Says IRS Approved Tax-Exempt Status for Twice as Many Conservative Groups as Liberal Groups
However, the IRS does publish the names of groups that have received special scrutiny and been approved for tax-exempt status. They recently released a list of 176 organizations that have been approved since 2010, so Martin Sullivan checked each one to figure out if it was liberal or conservative. Here’s what he found:
122 conservative
48 liberal/nonconservative
6 unknown
This doesn’t tell us anything definitive about the entire set of groups that got special scrutiny. If the whole set is similar to the approved set, then about two-thirds were conservative and one-third liberal—most likely because of the boom in new tea party groups in 2010. But that’s just a guess.
One thing isn’t a guess, however: Two-thirds of the groups who were approved for tax-exempt status were conservative. If the IRS was on a partisan witch hunt against conservative groups, that’s sure an odd way of showing it, isn’t it?
More: Report Says IRS Approved Tax-Exempt Status for Twice as Many Conservative Groups as Liberal Groups