Two tax experts explain why you shouldn’t hold your breath about the NRA losing its tax-exempt status.
Ever since the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in April descended into infighting and chaos among the group’s leaders, the nation’s leading gun rights group’s private drama has continued to spiral into a growing public crisis. The latest face-plant came last week, when the Washington Post published a pair of investigations detailing the NRA’s exorbitant flow of money to its board members, revealing more about the group’s questionable spending practices, possible ties to Kremlin-linked Russian operatives, and dire financial situation, which paints a portrait of an organization spending far more cash than its revenue stream should allow.
This could all amount to a giant red flag for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the NRA’s tax-exempt status. But it’s been nearly two months since Oliver North leaked his controversial memo detailing the organization’s financial situation, and, even after numerous calls for the IRS to open an investigation, all that’s come of it is a Senate Finance Committee investigation led by ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), along with Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), which the NRA, thus far, is not cooperating with.
“It looks like there’s something wrong and I think the IRS certainly needs to investigate this,” a DC-based lawyer at GKG Law, P.C. who counsels nonprofits on tax matters, says on the Post’s investigation. “The IRS’s job is to enforce situations like this and make sure that the funds that the NRA collects are being used for the purpose of benefiting its members, and not necessarily for the purpose of benefiting its board members.”
But the attorney is not too optimistic that the IRS will intervene anytime soon. “Immediate is not a term that the IRS really follows very well,” he says.
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