UNDATED, May 15: For Kevin Kookogey, the US Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of his one-man outfit providing conservative mentoring for students was so onerous he thought it was trying to deter him from political activity.
“It worked,” said the Tennessean who ran the group Linchpins of Liberty. “I completely shut down and do my mentoring without fundraising so I can avoid getting audited.”
Kookogey is one of many conservatives who complain about unfair treatment at the hands of the IRS, the U.S. Tax service that admitted last Friday it had inappropriately singled out the Tea Party movement and other conservative groups for extra examination.
Yesterday, a government watchdog sharply criticized the IRS for its targeting of conservative groups and warned that the agency’s actions gave the appearance that it was not politically impartial.
As the political scandal grew, Attorney General Eric Holder promised on Tuesday to investigate the agency and President Barack Obama called the watchdog report’s findings “intolerable and inexcusable.” Both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for investigations.
Conservative leaders and their lawyers say many of those ensnared were small groups, ill-equipped to handle the intense questioning and document demands that came as they sought tax-exempt status.
“What has got lost in all the news about the IRS targeting conservative groups is that these aren’t the big fish like FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots or Americans for Prosperity,” said Dawn Wildman, president of SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition Inc, a conservative group in Southern California, in reference to some of the largest such groups.
Wildman says she dropped her group’s application for tax-exempt status because of IRS push back. “These are just small, largely self-funded, mom and pop Tea Party groups that lack resources to fight back,” she added.
The conservative American Center for Law and Justice, which provided legal aid to 27 targeted groups, said the intense scrutiny placed a hardship on its clients, whose average fundraising is around $3,000 to $4,000 a year.
“The IRS knew from the applications the size of the group and picked on the small ones figuring they wouldn’t put up a fight,” chief counsel Jay Sekulow said. “Most of the big guys got a pass.”
The IRS declined to comment on which groups it targeted or on any individual cases.
Follow our WhatsApp channel