Opinion: IRS Should Rethink Its Treatment of Charities

The IRS’s recent action to strip 275,000 groups of their tax exemptions “is at odds with the idea that nonprofits are essentially private organizations whose value lies in their ability to contribute to public life without being controlled by government,” write two nonprofit experts in The Wall Street Journal.

Suzanne Garment, a tax lawyer, and Leslie Lenkowsky, an Indiana University professor and Chronicle columnist, say the effort signals a move by the federal government toward micromanagement of the nonprofit world, something that could harm charities.

What’s more, they say, the action is now costly for nonprofits that lost their status and for the IRS, which must handle the process of reinstating some organizations that were purged from the tax rolls.