The Real IRS Scandal

By: Leandra Lederman

It is well known that the IRS was accused in 2013 of targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups for delays in their 501(c)(4) applications for tax-exempt status. TIGTA’s May 2013 report (and Lois Lerner’s statements at an ABA Tax Section meeting a few days earlier) launched the controversy, which harmed the IRS and a number of its employees. (Cf. my earlier Surly post, “Don’t Impeach IRS Commissioner Koskinen.”)

In 2016, I published an article, “IRS Reform: Politics As Usual?,” analyzing the facts underlying these accusations and the law applicable to the IRS’s determination of tax-exempt status. I argued that the facts showed that the IRS was not motivated by partisan politics. Rather, what happened was that IRS employees included a keyword approach in its efforts to triage the large volume of applications for tax-exempt status it was receiving. Its “Be On the Lookout” (BOLO) list of words was designed to help it identify for further scrutiny those organizations that were engaged in more political activity than was permitted under section 501(c)(4), which, generally speaking gants exempt status to organizations “for the promotion of social welfare.” As I describe in that article, the IRS tried but failed to get ahead of a brewing political controversy on this. There was evidence even in the 2010 IRS PowerPoint highlighting types of groups applying for a determination of exempt status under 501(c)(4) that the IRS had both Tea Party and progressive political organizations on its radar. But the news was full of stories of the IRS supposedly targeting conservative tax-exempt organizations.

The Washington Post has reported in an article titled Liberal groups got IRS scrutiny, too, inspector general suggests, that TIGTA will be issuing a new report finding that the IRS also used keywords to try to identify progressive groups engaging in too much political activity to qualify for the tax exemption under 501(c)(4) they were applying Continue reading “The Real IRS Scandal” →

We Hear What We Want to Hear

Shu-Yi Oei

I’ve been preoccupied by country music these past few days. For this, I blame my Tulane colleague, Sally Richardson, who recently wrote this post on Property Law Profs Blog. In it, Sally makes the following observation:

Last week, my good friend, brilliant colleague, and property law scholar extraordinaire, Jim Gordley (Tulane), told me that he had been on a road trip and listened to a good deal of country music. In the course of listening to a series of country songs, Jim decided that country music was about two things: love and breaking the law. Being from the south and having listened to my fair share of country music, I have to admit that Jim is right. Just listen to Friends in Low Places, Achy-Breaky Heart, Before He Cheats, Folsom Prison Blues, and Ol’ Red and you can see for yourself. Sure, there are some other songs about dogs and beer, but those are really in the minority. Most country music is about love and the law.

Sally also shares some really genius lyrics coined by Jim, which include:

I assign and convey to you
That unencumbered heart
With one restrictive covenant
That we shall never part,
And this condition subsequent
That if you let it break,
Then I in my discretion
May reenter and retake.

Reminds me a bit of the Conway Twitty tax case—both the Tax Court’s Ode and the IRS AOD in response!

Of course, as a matter of substance, I think Jim and Sally are dead wrong. Love and breaking the law…pshaw! Aside from some notable lines such as the one about Ilsa the acrobat falling in love with Horatio the Human Cannonball, country music is, in fact, all about economic security, lending and financing, foreclosure, bailouts, and tax.

Let me explain:

Caveat: I have an immense soft spot for country music. Some days I have half a mind to move to Nashville and try to earn a living as a country music songwriter. (I’m only very slightly kidding about that.) However, I do not actually know anything about country music. And obviously, country music has a bazillion subgenres is about lots of other things as well (as this article describes), including the painful, painful process of creating legal scholarship.

Continue reading “We Hear What We Want to Hear” →

The Strategic Case Against the Democratic Filibuster of Neil Gorsuch

Photo: Jarrad Henderson, USA TODAY

By: Daniel Hemel and David Herzig

[Note: This post is co-authored with Daniel Hemel, Assistant Professor of Law at The University of Chicago School of Law.]

The strategic case against a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch is straightforward. The argument is not that the filibuster will prevent President Trump from putting someone like Andrew Napolitano on the Court. The argument is that the filibuster may prevent President Trump from filling a future vacancy with a well-credentialed conservative who is ideologically similar to or right of Judge Gorsuch. To elaborate:

— (a) The filibuster accomplishes no work when there are fewer than 50 Senators who will support a nominee on an up-or-down vote. (Napolitano presumably falls into this category.)

— (b) The filibuster also does no work when there are 50 or more Senators who will support a nominee even if that means going nuclear. (Judge Gorsuch appears to fall into this category.)

— (c) The filibuster matters when (1) there is a nominee who would win 50 or more Senators on an up-or-down vote, but (2) fewer than 50 Senators would support the nuclear option in order to put the nominee on the Court.

Is (c) an empty set?

Continue reading “The Strategic Case Against the Democratic Filibuster of Neil Gorsuch” →