AIPAC is tax exempt. Why?

What is a non-profit corporation? Here's a simple answer I found.

"A nonprofit corporation is not formed with the intent to realize a profit, but is established for a religious, charitable, educational, literary or scientific purpose. Qualifying nonprofit corporations will be granted tax-exempt status by both federal and state authorities. "

Does AIPAC qualify? They would like you and the IRS to think so, but there is good reason to believe they don't. The evidence comes from information revealed in legal actions in which AIPAC has been involved over the years.

Hence, this story in the news...

IRS Asked to Revoke AIPAC's Tax Exemption

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Internal Revenue Service received a 1,389 page filing demanding that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC's) tax exempt status be retroactively revoked. The filing, submitted by the IRmep Center for Policy and Law Enforcement, spans nearly 60 years, from the moment AIPAC's founder left the employment of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the present.

If you'd like to read a 67 page PDF of the filing, you can get all the details, but here are a few interesting excerpts that do make one wonder about tax exemption for AIPAC (italics mine).

AIPAC’s founder left the Israeli government after agreeing with its representatives to lobby for aid and support in the United States...Little inside knowledge and few declassified documents are needed to understand that AIPAC’s purpose is to represent and secure concessions for the Israeli government in the United States. AIPAC’s activities have inevitably led to many costly law enforcement actions as different regulators attempted to limit its harmful impact on society. AIPAC’s earliest “educational” activities helped spur nuclear proliferation in the Middle East in direct opposition to official US policy while its foreign funded propaganda campaigns undermined the US news media, academia and freedom of speech. Documented AIPAC propaganda campaigns funded and conducted on behalf of Israel confirm that it is not an “educational” association either by the IRS definition or section of DC Code under which it was organized.

AIPAC’s actual activities also reveal it serves few discernable social welfare functions in the United States—a requirement for 501(c)(4) status. The Department of Justice, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the FBI, the US Trade Representative and the federal judiciary system have all undertaken costly monitoring and enforcement actions in response to the harmful AIPAC activities documented here. Declassified, organized and analyzed, these enforcement files provide a documentary record of violations the IRS must now review against AIPAC’s claimed charitable purposes.

It turns out there is so much questionable behavior going on regarding Israel and charitable giving that the IRS has a "Israel Special Policy" group created in 2010 to examine groups seeking non-profit status. I've already mentioned tax deductions for private contributions to Israel in most-favored-nation - part 1 and how poorly that is monitored. Read this short history of giving where Israel is involved (also from the PDF)...

In the 1940s nonprofit Israeli fronts were used to steal, divert and smuggle arms and equipment that was otherwise destined for scrap by the War Assets Administration to the Middle East in violation of US Arms Export Controls (see the appendix Arming David: The Haganah’s Illegal Arms Procurement Network in the United States and the appendix Declassified US Justice Department Memo on Arms Smuggling). In the 1950s and 1960s US charitable tax exempt donations were used to fund or enable Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, in direct challenge to US nonproliferation policies. In the 1980s and 1990s nonprofit (and for profit) organizations facilitated commercial espionage against US industries to further the trade interests of Israeli industries. In the years 2000‐2005 AIPAC was at the center of an intense FBI investigation focusing on the diversion of classified National Defense Information to persons not entitled to receive it, including Israeli diplomats in the interest of touching off US military action against Iran.

Remember that any group that escapes taxes means more taxes for you and I to pay. I'd say the IRS has some investigating to do, wouldn't you?