It seems to me that if you want to play at rigging elections by giving millions of undisclosed cash to organizations dedicated to a specific political agenda you ought to have to pay the tax man. I could be wrong of course. I was never a tax lawyer, but this argument seems correct on its face:
On Monday, Campaign Money Watch, a project of Public Campaign Action Fund, planned to send letters to five Republican-allied groups that are incorporated as nonprofits under Section 501 (c)(4) of the tax code and to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asking whether they advise their donors to pay the gift tax. […]
The burden for paying the tax does not fall on the organizations, but with the donors themselves.
Under the law, gifts greater than $13,000 – or $26,000 per couple – are taxable at a 35 percent rate. That means a $1 million gift carries a $350,000 tax with it. […]
“The issue is whether if I give $1 million to Karl Rove and tell him to buy ads across the country, is that a gift or am I giving him a task and paying him to do it?” Owens said.
That places the donation in something of a gray zone. If the gift gets nothing in return then it’s taxable; if it’s too specific about where political ads should be placed, then it could trigger disclosure to the Federal Election Commission.
Either way, I’d like to know who is really funding the massive election campaign ads against primarily Democrats. I know it isn’t millions of donors contributing just a few hundred dollars.
