Tax Exempt Status

WASHINGTON -- In public, televangelist Pat Robertson is a smiling preacher who insists his Christian Coalition is a nonpartisan group that seeks only to educate voters about religious issues, not to elect one party or specific politicians.But behind closed doors last week, Robertson revealed himself as a tough political boss who expects his troops to issue marching orders to a Republican Congress he says they elected and to handpick the country's next Republican president in 2000."We're not a bunch of ingenues any more," he told about 100 state leaders at a meeting in Atlanta.

More than 100 churches in Maryland - including dozens in Baltimore - have made campaign contributions to political candidates in recent years, an act that is prohibited by federal tax law and blurs the line between politics and the pulpit. Some have given repeatedly, such as the Southern Baptist Church in East Baltimore, which made a dozen campaign donations between 2000 and 2004 that add up to more than $3,000, according to a review by The Sun of candidate finance reports. Statewide, at least 115 churches have given to about 40 candidates since 2000, according to the review, and while the donations are generally small and sporadic, they flout Internal Revenue Service regulations that prohibit churches from advocating for specific political candidates.

Charging that an IRS audit was "motivated by partisan politics," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond announced yesterday that the civil rights group would not comply with the federal probe alleging Bond had inappropriately intervened in the presidential campaign by criticizing President Bush. "We are prepared to fight," Bond said yesterday. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent a letter Friday to the Internal Revenue Service in response to a summons sent to the organization, dated Jan. 13. The IRS requested documents for the investigation into the group's tax-exempt status.

Ehrlich was right to push for audit It seems that in many of the articles in The Sun relating to the investigation of the tax-exempt status of the NAACP, the paper is signaling that the governor has done something wrong by requesting that the investigation should move forward ("Ehrlich defends 2001 IRS inquiry," May 20, and "Gubernatorial two-step," editorial, May 23). But the governor has owned up to the fact that he pushed for this investigation to help a friend who truly believed that a wrong had taken place.

Recent local and national reports have shown the critical rol that nonprofits play in our communities. But, just when nonprofits thought it was safe to come out, big brother is cruisin' to give 'em a bruisin'.What we're talking about here is the issue of taxing nonprofits in one form or another, be it property taxes or a variety of use taxes. What prompted my latest look at the issue was a newsletter I recently received from Drew Hastings, Executive Director of the Delaware Association of Nonprofit Agencies (DANA)

Beneath signs reading "Say no to church taxes," Baltimore religious leaders and congregants rallied outside City Hall yesterday to protest city plans for an energy tax on churches and other nonprofit organizations. "We consider a vote for this measure as a vote against us," said the Rev. Gregory B. Perkins, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, a group of predominantly African-American clergy. Perkins organized the rally. About two dozen church leaders and an equal number of church members gathered around Perkins as he spoke with reporters for about 15 minutes.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama fired the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the first sacrificial lamb brought down after the alleged "targeting" of conservative political groups by the IRS. Mr. Obama declared, "Americans are right to be angry about it. " Call me out of step, but I am angrier that the president is joining the rush to judgment. All that is known for sure is that some IRS functionaries took a shorthand route to identify partisan political groups that might be pretending not to be political so that they could get the tax exempt status available to social welfare organizations.

Proposals in the Maryland General Assembly to define which patients are eligible for financial assistance at hospitals are getting an unexpected push from Congress, which might soon consider legislation aimed at making nonprofit hospitals justify their tax-exempt status. The push comes on the heels of a Feb. 12 Internal Revenue Service report showing that a small percentage of America's nonprofit hospitals provide nearly two-thirds of the nation's free or reduced-price care for the poor.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing the NAACP, scrutinizing the nation's oldest civil rights group after its chairman gave a stinging criticism of the Bush administration in a speech this summer. Julian Bond's July 11 comments at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's convention in Philadelphia chastised President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover not to address the group. Bush declined the group's invitation to speak, while Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry accepted.