Enveloping Tale of Two Dans: Seals and Rostenkowski

I was hanging out at TA's blog where I was surprised to learn that Democrat 10th District candidate, Dan Seals, accepted an envelope during his night class at Northwestern University from long time Congressman and convicted felon Dan Rostenkowski. That takes guts. Some people seem to be somewhat confused as to the contents of the envelope, but I trust my readers are politically savvy enough to know precisely what is in it. I have to hand it to Seals, though. Could he have provided a more instructive class than demonstrating the use of the envelope in influencing government policy?

Anyway, some of the readers over at TA's seemed to be unsure of the prohibitions on political activity on so-called 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable institutions, which includes schools and churches. The IRS has a link to a great tutorial on tax exemption, which we thought you might enjoy. If you are simply interested in the limits on political activities and how an institution can jeopardize its tax-exempt you can jump directly to that part of the tutorial.

The ban on political campaign activity by tax-exempt charities and churches was created by Congress more than a half century ago. The IRS has been somewhat lax in its enforcement, and what we are seeing now in churches and schools coming from Dan Seals campaign and from Barack Obama's campaign isn't anything new.