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As a counterpoint to a lot of the outrage, it's worth noting that the rules around 501c4 organizations are fucked.

As Ezra Klein points out "The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/10/t...

The fact that this has become a political issue is a huge failure of governance, not politics.

Wow Ezra Klein gets it completely wrong. I think he's confusing 501 c(4) and c(3). c(3) are traditional social welfare charities and donations to them are tax exempt, c(4) are explicitly for political lobbying and donations are taxable. (I worked as an executive in this space for a decade). c(4) cannot get involved in elections (they can't call for the election or defeat of a specific candidate) but they can do "voter education". But in any event, the donations made to a c(4) are not tax-deductible and are private. By the way, the c4 privacy rules emerged out of the civil rights movement, when there was a concern about the government punishing people supporting civil rights. Many groups-- think Sierra Club-- have both a c(3) and a c(4) and have internal accounting in place to keep track of it all.

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