The people’s voice has been heard!  Overwhelmed with comments about a proposed regulation limiting the free speech of many non-profit organizations, the IRS is backing down – for now.

Alan Berkelhammer summarizes:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen announced at the National Press Club on Tuesday, that the IRS has postponed a proposed rule change that would have banned all political speech in 501(c)(4) groups. The IRS received more than 150,000 citizen comments, far more than on any previous proposed rule change.

Senator Ted Cruz celebrated the victory:

When Americans speak up, it makes a difference. A record number of Americans spoke out against a regulation being considered by the IRS to stifle free speech of 501(c)(4) political groups. As a result, it is unlikely those rules will be implemented this year. This is a substantial victory for the grassroots and should serve as motivation to continue pressuring the IRS to drop the rule completely.

However, Koskinen was careful to mention that “It’s going to take us a while to sort through all those comments” and come up with a revision (emphasis ours).  This will not surprise many conservative groups who were targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS – they know the IRS can indeed “take a while” when responding to requests.

View footage from Koskinen’s report here:

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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