The IRS has stripped white nationalist Richard Spencer’s nonprofit of its tax-exempt status over failure to file tax returns after 2012.
Spencer told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that an IRS error was to blame for the National Policy Institute’s failure to file federal tax returns.
The IRS had reportedly misclassified Spencer’s group, but fixed the error in February. On Monday the IRS’ updated records said the group’s tax-exempt status was stripped retroactively to May 2016.
Nonprofits are generally required to file tax returns each year. The IRS automatically revokes tax-exempt status for failing to file them for three consecutive years.
The National Policy Institute’s 2015 taxes should have been filed by May 2016, making it the third year in a row the group failed to file.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to make a comment because I don’t understand this stuff,” Spencer said. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but it’s not good. We’ll figure it out.”
He plans on appealing the decision.
It was also unclear as to whether Spencer had properly filed paperwork allowing his organization to operate as a nonprofit in Virginia. A spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said the nonprofit was under review.
A spokeswoman for the Virginia Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs said the group turned in “incomplete paperwork” years ago.
When the agency requested more information, “we never heard back from them,” Elaine Lidholm said.
Tax experts also told the newspaper that Spencer may have broken IRS rules that state leaders of nonprofits “cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official functions of the organization.”
Yet Spencer posted an anti-Hillary Clinton fundraising message on the group’s website months before the election.
After the election he told a crowd at National Policy Institute event that they had helped elect Donald Trump. Several of them responded by flashing Nazi-style salutes.
