[samolang]

So spending 10% of your budget on public policy is okay, but 49% is too much? You have to draw the line somewhere, they've chosen 49%. You can't just have IRS agents going "oh that sounds too political." You need actual enforceable rules.

[SomeCallMeTim]

You're creating and then trashing a strawman.

He said that he couldn't come up with ANYTHING that a "Tea Party" group could do outside of politics with the 51% of their money, other than launder it by giving it to other groups.

Why don't YOU come up with something OTHER than changing public policy that a Tea Party group would do with that 51%? Any Tea Party group is a political group by definition, and shouldn't qualify as a charitable group. Period. It's just a tax dodge, plain and simple. Heck, that's pretty much the point of the party is they don't like taxes, so it's a blatantly obvious tax dodge.

[samolang]

My point was that it doesn't matter that HE can't come up with anything. The IRS agent can't just be like, "well I don't think there's any way that a tea party group could be doing social welfare. Denied!" They have to use actual facts. They look at where their money was spent. They look at the rules and regulation for what is considered social welfare and what isn't. Then they determine whether or not 51% of that money was spent on social welfare.

[SomeCallMeTim]

>They have to use actual facts.

If I understand the process, it DOES involve judgement of IRS agents. The IRS requires that applicants describe what social welfare activities they're going to take part in. If they didn't put something in that blank that was reasonable, then of course they weren't rubber stamped.

The Tea Party is pretty much all about reducing government size and spending and reducing taxes, with a few other standard conservative (guns, military) and libertarian (privacy, intrusive government) positions thrown in [1]; what could a "Tea Party" organization do that would promote the social welfare? Looking at teaparty.org, there's nothing in their set of 15 core beliefs that fall under "social welfare", [2] except arguably "Traditional family values are encouraged." Pretty much a stretch to expect 51% of their money to be spent "encouraging family values" and only 49% on politics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement.

[2] http://www.teaparty.org/about-us/

[samolang]

They're not using the same definition of "social welfare" that you have in your head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization#501.28c.29.... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...