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Nonprofits, Politics, And Privacy, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

The time is ripe for a deeper consideration of the policy concerns that underlie public disclosure requirements for politically active tax-exempt nonprofit organizations and the related issue of privacy. To clarify the discussion, one aspect for deeper consideration is recognizing that this particular area is at the intersection of three significantly different disclosure regimes. Those three regimes are (1) federal tax law generally, (2) federal tax law as it applies to tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, and (3) federal election law. These regimes are a study in contrasts. Federal tax law strongly protects taxpayer information from public disclosure. And while federal tax …