Details on Take Charge America Suit Against Internal Revenue Service

A tipster (send in your tips here) just sent in a copy of the petition filed by Take Charge America against the Internal Revenue Service.

The petition states Take Charge America should be considered a tax exempt organization and that the IRS had determined that it “was not qualified for tax exempt status for its tax years ending June 30, 2002, 2003, and 2004.”

The issue seems to be the IRS adverse determination for the years examined would also be applicable and applied to “each open period that was not subject to examination, notwithstanding the fact that [the IRS] has no facts supporting a determination that [Take Charge America] is not qualified for tax-exempt status for any of those periods.”

It appears Take Charge America has been requesting a determination letter from the IRS for more than 270 days about its “continued qualification for tax empt status,” and has been unable to obtain one. So here we are in U.S. Tax Court.

Details

Take Charge America received a proposed revocation letter from the IRS in 2005 and in response filed a 43 page response.

In addition Jeffrey Tenenbaum from Venable has an attached length exhibit in which he makes the following statement:

While there may be some real issues concerning the modern day charitable activities of non-profit credit counseling groups based on the about of creditor control, it would be unfortunate to see credit counseling groups shuttered without an appropriate IRS process.

For credit counseling groups looking to challenge the IRS revocation of their tax status, the documents filed in conjunction with the petition make for interesting reading. And based on the length of the responses from Venable, must have cost an absolute fortune.

You can read the entire petition and supporting documents here.

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Steve Rhode Debt Coach and Author

Steve Rhode is the Get Out of Debt Guy and has been helping good people with bad debt problems since 1994. You can learn more about Steve, here.

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