Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Following up on last month’s post about the IRS’s 3-page letters to the presidential campaigns warning that it “will take whatever actions are necessary to stem abusive behavior” by churches that directly or indirectly participate in the campaigns on behalf of any candidate: the Washington Post reports that the Bush campaign is aggressively testing the limits of these rules by courting church involvement in the effort to re-elect President Bush. According to the Post “tax experts [Milton Cerney of Caplin & Drysdale (D.C.) & Rosemary Fei of Silk, Adler & Colvin (San Francisco)] said the campaign is walking a fine line between permissible activity by individual congregants and impermissible activity by congregations.” (Thanks to reader Steven Sholk for the tip.)