Judge Orders IRS to Refund Taxes to Christian Coalition

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to refund taxes paid by the Christian Coalition for 1990 after the IRS conceded that the organization of religious conservatives was tax-exempt for that year.

The order ended a lawsuit alleging that the IRS unfairly denied the coalition’s application for tax-exempt status because the agency disagreed with the politics of the group, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

“Everything we asked for in the complaint we got today,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented the Chesapeake, Va.-based coalition.

The case was never about the amount of the tax--$169.26--but about forcing the IRS to acknowledge the coalition’s tax exemption, Sekulow said. He said the government’s concession over 1990 should prevent the IRS from seeking taxes from the coalition after that year as well.

“For the government to deny tax exemption for any other year would be disingenuous,” he said.

However, Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which represented the IRS in the case, said the ruling “does not apply to any other tax year.”

The coalition, established in 1989 after Robertson’s failed presidential bid a year earlier, became a major force in Republican politics in the 1990s by mobilizing conservative voters through grass-roots activities.

After a decade of review, the IRS concluded last year that some of the activities, such as the distribution of voter guides at churches, were too partisan for the coalition to have tax-exempt status.

Last August, the federal court in Washington threw out most of the charges in a lawsuit by the Federal Election Commission that challenged the coalition’s voter guides and accused the Christian Coalition of illegally aiding GOP candidates.