IRS scrutinizing charities' political work

The Boston Globe reports:

An increasing number of churches and other charities are violating laws prohibiting involvement in political campaigns, prompting increased enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service and calls for a further crackdown.


An IRS review completed in February looked at 82 complaints about charities and found that three-quarters of the groups, nearly half of them churches, had violated laws against political activities.

Mark Everson, the IRS commissioner, said in an interview with the Globe that despite the laws, charities receive less scrutiny than political committees, and are becoming increasingly attractive to those who want to use them for political activity.

''I'm very concerned about continued inappropriate activity this [election] cycle," Everson said. ''Every indication I get is that this will be a problem and probably more of a problem. . . . My worry is that clever attorneys are seeing that this is a much less regulated area and they are willfully skewering some activities into the nonprofits and to some degree the churches as well."

As government grows virtually everything in society is affected by politics.Just ask Jesse Jackson.