"As foreign influence in U.S. elections dominates the headlines, the Department of the Treasury has issued a new policy that could make it more difficult for the government to prevent foreign entities from secretly funding political activity in the U.S.
The Treasury Department announced on Monday that they will stop requiring many nonprofits, including 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups that are allowed to spend money on politics without publicly disclosing their donors, to include the identities of their donors on forms they file with the Internal Revenue Service.
Currently, the names and addresses of donors are reported to the IRS on 990 Schedule B forms, but these details are redacted before they are made public."
yeah, that’s not good…
“The only real protection we currently have against the use of 501(c)(4) groups to launder foreign money into federal elections is that 501(c)(4) groups must disclose their donors, including foreign donors, to the IRS,” the groups said. “Eliminating the existing requirement for disclosure […] would open the door wide for secret, unaccountable money from foreign governments, foreign corporations and foreign individuals to be illegally laundered into federal elections.”
groups that are allowed to spend money on politics without publicly disclosing their donors
They stopped collecting that information because it doesn’t have any tax implications. They can however still request if they see any need to. If it needs to be collected for purposes of safeguarding elections it should be collected by the FEC not the IRS.
And do you know why they can keep their donors a secret? See NAACP V Alabama
In an opinion delivered by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the petitioners, holding that “Immunity from state scrutiny of petitioner’s membership lists is here so related to the right of petitioner’s members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment” and, further, that freedom to associate with organizations dedicated to the “advancement of beliefs and ideas” is an inseparable part of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The action of the state’s obtaining the names of the Association’s membership would likely interfere with the free association of its members, so the state’s interest in obtaining the records was superseded by the constitutional rights of the petitioners.
