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  • 2017-03-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the IRS 'Fast Track' Tax-Exempt Status for 'After School Satan' Clubs? (en)
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  • On 16 March 2017, conservative legal activism group Judicial Watch published a blog post in which they claimed the Internal Revenue Service had favored After School Satan secularist clubs by fast tracking their tax exempt status: Although Judicial Watch claims to have obtained documents that prove their claim, the documents they provide do no such thing; they obtained filings for Reason Alliance, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the After School Satan clubs, but the clubs were not created until two years later and do not have their own independent nonprofit status. Judicial Watch obtained and published an application by Reason Alliance Ltd for tax exempt status which was signed on 21 October 2014. They also published the IRS's response notifying the group they had been approved for status as a private foundation on 31 October 2014. Neither the letter from the IRS or the application make mention of After School Satan clubs or the fast tracking of the application. According to a statement released by the Satanic Temple, an activist group that created the After School Satan program in 2016 to counter a Bible study group in public schools, the clubs were sponsored by Reason Alliance to pay for things like operating costs and insurance: The Satanic Temple is a secular activist group that leverages the legal system to promote plurality and counter what they view as overreach by Christianity in the public sphere (they do not promote worshiping Satan or anyone else, but have seven tenets that are similar to secular humanist beliefs). Their co-founder and spokesman Lucien Greaves told us that neither the Satanic Temple nor the After School Satan clubs sought or received tax-exempt status. Reason Alliance was created in 2014 to be a place where donors who support TST's tenets and who want tax deductions for donations can have an entity to donate to. The Satanic Temple is known for bringing legal challenges against religious monuments by seeking to place their own goat-headed statue of Baphomet nearby and placing pentagrams next to Nativity scenes during the holiday season. Pushback against their tactics often results in acknowledgement that religious freedom refers to more than mainstream beliefs. True to form, the Satanic Temple launched a nationwide campaign in the summer of 2016 establishing After School Satan clubs in public schools that had Good News Clubs, evangelist after-school Christian clubs for schoolchildren. The Washington Post was the first to break the story on 30 July 2016: Greaves sent us a copy of one of the first letters sent by the organization to a school district asking to operate a Satan club on school grounds. The letter is dated 1 August 2016, and was sent to the superintendent of Neah-Kah-Nie School District in Rockaway Beach, Oregon: Forbes contributor and certified public accountant Peter J. Reilly wrote on 26 March 2017 that the timeframe from which the group submitted their application to when they received approval was probably influenced by the fact the IRS had been criticized over 2013 allegations that staffers had discriminated against conservative groups. The agency's response was to create an expedited process for small organizations to more swiftly acquire an approval or denial on their tax-exempt status: We found no evidence to support the claim that After School Satan clubs were the beneficiaries of fast tracking by the IRS to help them swiftly gain tax exempt status. (en)
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