Civil Rights Group loses non-profit tax status

CAIR loses non-profit status
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0611/CAIR_loses_nonprofit_status.html?showall
June 23, 2011 

      The Council on American-Islamic Relations has lost its nonprofit status, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
      The civil rights group, long accused of ties to radical Islam, is on a list of 275,000 organizations who have not filed the requisite paperwork with the IRS to maintain nonprofit status. Tax law requires annual disclosure of assets, expenditures and salaries for 501(c) non-profits. Both CAIR and sister organization CAIR Foundation have lost their status.
      A CAIR attorney initially told POLITICO that its appearance on the IRS list referred to a defunct arm of the nonprofit, and that CAIR and CAIR foundation were unaffected -- a claim that a review of the IRS documents did not support. CAIR then told POLITICO the IRS was to blame, citing a number of other errors that have occurred on the IRS list. However, CAIR could not produce their IRS disclosure forms for 2007 through 2010 -- which are required to be open for public inspection.
      "We are looking into all of these issues and are working with the IRS to clear things up," CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told POLITICO. "CAIR was clearly not targeted or singled in any way by the IRS."
       CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a landmark terrorism financing trial in Texas. Some Islamic charities facing federal investigations have been advised by attorneys not to file IRS paperwork for legal reasons, but there is no evidence that CAIR is currently the target of a federal probe.