IRS approves tax-exempt status for ABQ Tea Party

Conservative group filed request nearly 8 years ago

It took nearly eight years, but the Albuquerque Tea Party has finally been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.

“What I understand is the IRS was targeting any organization that had the name ‘Tea Party’ in it or the word ‘conservative.’ We weren’t the only ones,” said Graham Bartlett, president of the local Tea Party.

He said he’d been informed about a month ago by the group’s legal counsel, the Washington, D.C.-based American Center for Law

and Justice, that the requested 501(c)(4) status was coming through.

“I didn’t want to say anything and make it public until I had the actual documentation in my hands,” Bartlett said Monday.

The Albuquerque Tea Party requested tax-exempt status because it relies on donations, and people tend to donate more when they know they can write it off on their taxes, he said.

Further, tax-exempt status allows one party to transfer money to and receive money from other tax-exempt entities without paying taxes on those funds.

“We’re basically an education organization. We don’t have dues, and we rely on donations,” Bartlett said. “Some of our activities cost money,” such as costs for renting space for candidate forums and printing literature.

Daniel Moore, the Tea Party chairman of communications and a board member, said that the process of applying for tax exempt status is normally concluded within six months, at which point “you know if you have it or not, and if you don’t you can appeal.”

The local organization filed its request in December 2009. Several months later, the IRS demanded more documentation concerning the organization’s activities. The group complied, Bartlett said.

The IRS then requested even more documentation, including board minutes, brochures, newsletters and correspondences. In all, the Tea Party provided more than 1,000 pages, but as the months and years passed there was still no decision on the application for tax-exempt status.

The long wait was “absolutely unusual and unconscionable and speaks directly to the issue of free speech,” Moore said.

In 2012, the American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit against the IRS on behalf of the Albuquerque Tea Party as well as other conservative groups whose requests for tax-exempt status seemed to be put on hold during the Obama administration.

The ACLJ is a conservative, Christianbased organization associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Va. The organization’s chief counsel is Jay Sekulow, a member of President Donald Trump’s private legal team.

The FBI in 2014 announced its investigation into IRS tactics found examples of “mismanagement and poor judgment,” but no evidence to support criminal prosecution.

Likewise the Department of Justice announced in 2015 that its review had found no evidence that “any IRS official acted on political, discriminatory, corrupt or inappropriate motives” in the handling of tax-exempt applications.

However, both Bartlett and Moore noted that since President Trump and the Republicans assumed power in Washington, D.C., in January, there seems to have been a change in policy and tone at the IRS.