Blog from the Capital

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has released a memo updating his progress in investigating the finances of 6 television ministries for potential misuse of tax-exempt status. It looks like 2 of the respondents have been highly cooperative, 2 moderately so, and 2 - Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar - to be openly defiant.

The ministries that continue not to cooperate appear to be heeding the advice of attorneys who are not familiar with congressional oversight in general and specifically the Finance Committee’s oversight and legislative work in the area of tax-exempt organizations over the last seven years. These attorneys who aren’t part of the ministries themselves have a natural incentive to prolong the process as long as possible.

At the end of the memo, the Senator has provided a "Background Questions and Answers" section that outlines his understanding of churches' tax exemption, and his committee's role in oversight. Here's just one:

Q: Why shouldn’t the Church Audit Procedures Act (CAPA) apply to the Finance Committee investigation?
A:
...
CAPA was enacted in response to concerns about the IRS auditing churches and that these churches were committing significant time and resources to these audits. CAPA was designed specifically to ensure that the IRS thought long and hard before auditing churches and to ensure that examination of religious doctrine was not the basis for an audit.

CAPA was not intended to be a shield for churches to put up in the face of legitimate IRS inquiries related to church tax liability, and this is supported by the testimony of Rep. Mickey Edwards and officials from the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service during the hearing. Congressman Edwards, the sponsor of the original House bill, stated: "We don’t mean in this legislation to try to protect delinquent churches from penalties that ought to be assessed."