Following a
WorldNetDaily report questioning the tax-exempt status of the
Million Mom March gun-control organization that met in Washington, D.C. over the weekend, group officials said they would transform the organization into a political action committee after its Mother's Day debut and drop its 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt status.
Beginning Monday, said group chairman Donna Dees-Thomases, she and other mothers "will take off our oven mitts and look at candidates very closely. Shame on us if we do not keep it going." She also said her organization would begin to endorse and oppose political candidates, ostensibly based on their views on gun control.
By most estimates, the number of people participating in the Washington, D.C. rally was closer to 100,000 than one million.
On Thursday, WorldNetDaily cited concerns expressed by critics of the march who questioned the group's activities as possible violations of IRS tax laws prohibiting certain kinds of political activity for 501 (c)(3) organizations.
Specifically, they charged that the group's primary activity "consists of carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation," a no-no according to the Internal Revenue Service code governing the activities of non-profit charitable organizations.
According to Don Kramer's
Non-Profit Issues website, "Public charities are specifically permitted by the tax code to lobby on pending legislation, provided that the activity is not 'substantial.' Some organizations may even increase their permitted activity by electing to be governed by specific expenditure limits under Section 501(h) of the code."
Kramer, a practicing Philadelphia attorney, added that non-profits are "absolutely prohibited" from engaging in "electioneering," under IRS regulations.
On the Million Mom March website is a page lampooning
House
Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas for his pro-gun positions.
"You stand by your guns, Mr. DeLay. Come Mother's Day, we mothers will stand together on the mall of Capitol Hill to remind your PRO-GUN House that on Election Day, the voters will stand by our children," said a letter on the group's site.
Dees-Thomases, the
sister-in-law of Susan Thomasas, a friend and
close political advisor to Hillary Clinton, said Saturday that she expects the "Million Mom March" organization would likely apply for a tax-exempt status that would allow for political activities while promoting social welfare. She said the group would probably not start a political action committee, since handgun control groups already do that.
"There has been no grass-roots movement" for gun control, she said. "It's all been done within the Beltway."
"There is no leeway for an 'insubstantial' participation in a campaign," Kramer wrote in his assessment of IRS codes as they pertain to the activities of nonprofits. "The prohibition covers candidates at any level of government, federal, state or local, including executive, legislative, judicial and other elected positions such as school board member."
Although the Million Mom March group has seen fit to change its legal classification to permit the kind of political activities in which critics say it may have already engaged, it is unclear whether the organization will be subjected to legal scrutiny for its activities up to this point.
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