While everyone has been focused on Trump’s latest Trump/Russia scandal, the Trump Administration sneaked this little nugget in late last night which is mostly flying below the outrage:
IRS reduces donor reporting rules for some tax-exempt groups
Certain tax-exempt groups will no longer be required to provide the names and addresses of donors to the IRS on annual forms under guidance that the Treasury Department and IRS released Monday evening.
Under federal law, charitable organizations that are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) have to provide to the IRS information about the names and addresses of substantial donors. The IRS has required other types of tax-exempt organizations — including 501(c)(4) groups that advocate for specific policies, such as the National Rifle Association and the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity — to also provide the agency with that information.
The names and addresses of donors is generally supposed to be kept private, but this information has improperly been made public in the past, notably in the case of the socially conservative National Organization for Marriage in 2012.
Under the new guidance, social-welfare groups and other tax-exempt organizations, besides charitable and political organizations, will no longer have to provide the IRS with the names and addresses of donors. The groups will still have to keep donor information in their own records and make it available for the IRS when the agency needs the information in audits of taxpayers.
NRA, the Koch-back organizations, and every other political group can now receive donations from US — and foreign — persons and corporations and those donations will no longer appear on the IRS Form 990 which are currently available to the public.
This is a MASSIVE expansion of the swamp. Political donations have effectively gone underground, to be found only by an IRS audit.
It seems likely that Republican billionaires will spend well over $300 million in 2018 to help Republicans retain power.