With the IRS scandals of early 2014 all but a distant memory, some closure is coming to the groups that the long arm of the tax law harassed. Unfortunately the verdicts aren´t going the way the affected would like.
The IRS may have inadvertently figured out how to win its legal battles against aggrieved tea party groups: Give them what they wanted in the first place — tax-exempt status.
That was a major reason a Republican-appointed federal judge on Thursday threw out two lawsuits brought by more than 40 conservative groups seeking remedies for being singled out in the tea party targeting scandal, a victory for the IRS.
More troubling than the apparent lack of justice (we wronged you, but then later made it up to you so we don´t need to be punished?!) is the reasoning behind the Federal Judge´s decision.
Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia dismissed almost all counts brought against the tax-collecting agency in two cases, ruling that both were essentially moot now that the IRS granted the groups their tax-exempt status that had been held up for years.Walton, a President George W. Bush-appointee, also said individual IRS officials could not be fined in their individual capacity for allowing such treatment because it could hurt future tax enforcement.
I guess I missed the memo where enforcement of the law included provisos to protect the ability of the law-breaker to further break the law in the future. I mean, wasn´t the original problem that the IRS was unduly harassing certain groups? If that´s the case, and the IRS is found guilty (which it was, just not punished), shouldn´t the law try to stop such harassment from happening again.
To use an analogy, let´s say I park in of my neighbor´s lane so he can´t leave to get to work in the morning. A couple days later I move my car, and the obstruction is gone. My neighbor takes me to court, and the court agrees that I unduly blocked him, but I´ve since moved my car so it´s a moot point. My neighbor says that´s ridiculous, and wants charges against me for trespassing on his property and stopping him from leaving. The court finishes by telling my neighbor that nothing can happen to me personally because that would dissuade me from parking in his lane in the future and blocking him in.
If you think that I´m getting off scot-free in the example above, I can only think of what you think of the IRS right now.
