{"id":187583,"date":"2011-05-11T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/05\/11\/schadenfraude-alert\/"},"modified":"2011-05-11T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T22:00:00","slug":"schadenfraude-alert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/05\/11\/schadenfraude-alert\/","title":{"rendered":"Schadenfraude Alert"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like a lot of big anonymous donors to political advcocy groups are facing a tough choice, pay a 35% gift tax, or contest the rules in open court<\/a>, where your anonymous donations to Karl Rove will become a matter of public record:<\/p>\n

The Internal Revenue Service appears to have begun to enforce a tax on gifts to the non-profit organizations that were a key vehicle for anonymous politics in the last five years and had promised to play a large role in the presidential cycle, a move which could reshape the place of money in politics in 2012. <\/p>\n

“It appears that the IRS Estate and Gift Tax team has also started paying attention to 501(c)(4) organizations,” a Los Angeles tax lawyer who has followed the issue closely, Ofer Lion, wrote in a memo to clients today. <\/p>\n

Gifts to other political organizations are not taxable under federal law, and lawyers informally say many donors do not typically pay the gift tax — which may run as high as 35%, mirroring income tax rates — for contributions to 501(c)4s.<\/p>\n

The IRS focus would only apply to quite large donors: the first $13,000 annually are exempt. The rest of the contributions, however, reduce a donor’s lifetime tax exemption, which stands currently at $5 million but stands to drop to $1 million in 2013, a fact which would mean a donor’s heirs lose substantially more to estate taxes, including potentially a “clawback” of money that’s already been given away back into the taxable estate.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

“[C]ontributors wishing to remain anonymous may feel the need to pay sizable gift tax assessments rather than challenge the tax in open court, and on the public record,” Lion wrote. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My heart bleeds borscht for the Koch suckers who now face Morton’s Fork<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like a lot of big anonymous donors to political advcocy groups are facing a tough choice, pay a 35% gift tax, or contest the rules in open court, where your anonymous donations to Karl Rove will become a matter of public record: The Internal Revenue Service appears to have begun to enforce a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094,969,978,985,1019,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance","category-evil","category-politics","category-regulation","category-schadenfreude","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}