article_snippet.sent: the IRS has admitted playing political favorites with the tax code beginning in 2010, when the IRS began applying extra scrutiny to groups with red-flag words like 'patriots' or 'tea party' in their names.
article_snippet.sent: While those organizations' applications were held up for years, liberal groups sailed through the process.
article_snippet.sent: Federal tax-exempt status is confered on groups that serve a public purpose, including issue advocacy, and allows groups that serve a public purpose, including issue advocacy to promise tax deductions to groups that serve a public purpose, including issue advocacy donors.
article_snippet.sent: : American conservatives were up in marks in 2013 after the IRS confirmed it had been slow-walking tax-exemption applications from tea party groups based on red-flag words in American conservatives names .
article_snippet.sent: Tax-exempt organizations are not permitted to work for or against candidates for public office, but Tax-exempt organizations can use up to half of Tax-exempt organizations funds to make public arguments about political matters like tax policy, the Obamacare insurance overhaul, the environment or foreign policy.
article_snippet.sent: the IRS commissioner John Koskinen has insisted that IRS commissioner John Koskinen is no longer targeting conservative groups with special scrutiny, and has offered to green-list any group that promises it will limit it political activity to 40 per cent of it budget – but some organizations are holdout out, claiming the law entitles some organizations to a 50 per cent limit .
article_snippet.sent: the IRS is the federal agency Americans most love to hate, polling worse in opinion surveys than Congress .
article_snippet.sent: A partial list was unearthed by USA Today in September 2013, showing that as of 2011 the IRS the IRS had questioned the political advocacy of 162 right-wing organizations and delayed approving the political advocacy of 162 right-wing organizations tax exemptions.
article_snippet.sent: In an the IRS spreadsheet published online by the newspaper, partisan government officials characterized the activities of 21 of those groups as 'propaganda.'
highlights_snippet.sent: the IRS applied different criteria to right-wing groups, holding up right-wing groups applications for years while liberal organizations skated through .
  