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By Casey HarperThe Center Squarehttps://www.thecentersquare.com/

Several Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate sent a letter to the IRS June 25 demanding the agency correct a ruling they say could have major implications for churches and faith-based organizations in the U.S.

Fifteen members signed the letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig about a Christian group in Texas called Christians Engaged. The group released a letter from the IRS stating that the federal tax agency denied the group 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, saying "Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates.

That line of reasoning has sparked significant controversy.

These issues have always been at the core of Christian belief and classifying them as inherently political is patently absurd, the Republican letter reads. If the IRS applied this interpretation broadly, it would jeopardize the tax-exempt status of thousands of Christian churches around the country.

Christians Engaged works to get Christians more active in government. They are challenging the IRS' denial. Now, they have the support of several members of Congress, whose Friday letter accuses the IRS of political biases.

We write today to express extreme concern regarding a recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) determination on the tax-exempt status of Christians Engaged, a nonprofit organization located in Texas, the letter says. We urge you to personally review this determination, and remove the individual, or individuals, responsible for the blatantly biased, discriminatory, and flawed reasoning that led to the determination.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah signed onto the letter, which goes on to call for the firing of the IRS employees responsible for the decision.

The IRS must objectively analyze applications for tax-exempt status and cannot allow political biases to creep into its decisions, the letter says. We urge you to immediately review Christians Engageds application for 501(c)(3) status personally, and terminate the IRS staff involved in the flawed and politically motivated reasoning behind the determination.

The IRS has not yet responded to the letter.

Christians Engaged incorporated in 2019 as a nonprofit in Texas. The groups mission is nonpartisan religious and civic education, focusing on encouraging and educating Christians to be civically engaged as a part of their religious practice.

The recent determination on Christians Engageds tax-exempt status further exposed the corruption and liberal bias running rampant at the IRS, said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. This discriminatory action against a Christian nonprofit is an overt attack on religious liberty by a tyrannical federal government. Moreover, this decision comes at a time when members of both parties are trying to increase the ability of the IRS to harass individual Americans, businesses, and organizations."

The controversy comes at a time when President Joe Biden has advocated for expanding the IRS to allow for more aggressive auditing in an attempt to raise revenue for his spending plans.

Commissioner Rettig must review this decision and hold accountable the IRS staff involved, and rather than expand the IRS's power, as the new infrastructure deal proposes, we should abolish it, Roy said.

The IRS came under heavy fire during the Obama administration for targeting conservatives in the Tea Party. Republicans Friday alluded to that treatment in their concern about this latest case.

Religious institutions should not be punished for their fundamental Judeo-Christian values. I am deeply concerned that the IRS is once again being weaponized against everyday Americans, said Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo. Their latest attempt to remove tax-exempt status from Christians Engaged sends a chilling warning that Americans First Amendment rights are under siege. We cannot allow any political bias at the IRS.

Other critics lumped the issue in with other key lines of attack against the Biden administration in recent weeks.

Biden/Harris IRS targets conservatives, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote on Twitter. Biden/Harris DOJ sues Georgia for voting laws. Biden/Harris DHS ignores the border crisis. And now Democrats in Congress want to give the Biden/Harris FTC more unchecked powers. Bad!Casey Harper is a senior reporter for the Washington, D.C. bureau. He previously worked for The Daily Caller, The Hill, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. A graduate of Hillsdale College, Harper's has also appeared in Fox News, Fox Business and USA Today.

Read more:
GOP questions IRS ruling that could jeopardize tax-exempt status of churches - The Highland County Press

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Cryptocurrency has become a mainstream investment. Tax authorities around the world are looking for ways to enforce taxation and identify tax evasion. Blockchain, the technology best known as the system underpinning bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, enables secure transactions between strangers without a trusted third party and on an anonymous basis. We should not fail to consider that blockchain technology goes far beyond cryptocurrencies.

What conclusions can I draw about my observations of blockchain? Blockchain could help the world overcome the hatred of taxes. My contention is that the real enemy we hate is not the tax itself but the myopia of not being able to see where our hard-earned money goes once it gets away from us. This does not mean that other factors are necessarily absent. Other factors include fear, complexity, bureaucratic procedures, and compound interest, let alone behavioral economics findings.

Know the enemy: We do not hate taxes, we hate the lack of transparency.

If while living at the beginning of the digital revolution you hate taxes, then you better be happy that you were not there when Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards. Russians of the time had different reasons to hate taxes than the Bostonians in 1773 during the Boston Tea Party. Our reasons to hate taxes belong to our own time and place in history.

Historians from the future should go directly to watch The Trouble with Trillions episode of The Simpsons that shows how current people experience the tax system nowadays. The episode starts on New Year Eve when Ned Flanders files his taxes (calculated with extremely cautious deductions). When does that the average person file taxes? You guessed it! Last-minute of the last day. The Simpsons news report by Kent Brockman is illustrative:

Future taxpayers will not understand this chapter as children today dont understand what a floppy disk and a VHS are. In that future world, automation will warrant that every taxable dollar is actually taxed and the bureaucratic procedures will be gone together with all the fear, and complexity of our tax system. However, it is uncertain whether transparency will be there. I am talking about transparency as a taxpayers right to follow the money. From no taxation without representation to no taxability without traceability. Sounds revolutionary, right? Revolutionary is what blockchain is doing.

To know the enemy, you must become the enemy: Transparency is possible where every taxpayer is a block that traces the tax revenue within a blockchain.

Blockchain is a decentralized solution for transparent real-time visibility of tax revenue. Imagine a giant spreadsheet that allows you to track every transaction made out of the tax revenue. Imagine that it is automatically updated every few minutes with the latest revenue movements. Now, here comes the fun: Imagine that the spreadsheet is not only stored by the government, instead it is in every taxpayers computer simultaneously, and with live updates. Just like you track my Amazon packages!

Traceability of the tax revenue is now centralized in the government that collects and spends. The system engenders from the disconformity of taxpayers who do not know where their money goes to political interference, discretionary spending, and corruption (on both sides, do not get me wrong). My proposal is a traceability system that would replace governmental trust for cryptographic proof.

Cryptographic proof gives blockchain the attribute of immutability. Every block of the blockchain subsequently verifies and confirms the information. That way, although every taxpayer is part of the system and can trace the data, none can independently intrude or alter the registered information. Going back to the Art of War, Chapter XIII - The Use of Spies taught us that when many unconnected spies are at work, none can manipulate the system.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

Sofia Larrea is an international tax and transaction services professional in Boston.

Bloomberg Tax Insights articles are written by experienced practitioners, academics, and policy experts discussing developments and current issues in taxation. To contribute, please contact us at TaxInsights@bloombergindustry.com.

See the article here:
Inventing the Enemy: Taxes - Bloomberg Tax

It feels like yesterday that my wife and I were shopping for grade schools for our daughter the same daughter who just graduated from high school.

We visited a bunch of private schools where the children of Washingtons elite get turned into the feedstock of the meritocracy.

The most remarkable thing about the experience was how nearly all of the schools were obsessed with diversity and all the pedagogic and social issues attached to the term. Many pitched diversity not merely as important but as their sole comparative advantage. The headmaster of one prestigious school even advised a group of parents to look at the mission statements of other schools. Youll see a lot of buzzwords like academic rigor and scholarship,' he warned, making scare quotes in the air with his fingers. Well, we want you to know that we consider our social justice mission more important than academics.

I often tell this story to point out that school choice isnt the solution to political correctness that many conservatives think it is. Parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools dont need vouchers; theyve got cash. Im bringing this up for different reasons.

Proponents of critical race theory and antiracism (the idea that being nonracist isnt good enough; you have to embrace an antiracist agenda) as an approach to classroom instruction believe America is shot through with structural racism and white supremacy and that white people must atone for their privilege somehow.

Taking this approach, they claim, will usher in a long-overdue reckoning with our past and present. They make it sound as if before 2021, it never occurred to anyone that kids should be taught about racism or the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Currently, most k-12 students already learn a kind of Confederate Race Theory, whereby the Daughters of the Confederacy long ago imposed a version of history wherein slavery was not so bad and had nothing to do with the civil war, and lynchings and violence never happened, MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid recently tweeted.

Well, I can report that this is otherworldly nonsense, going by my daughters experience or that of the children of people I know in Washington. At affluent K-12 schools, public or private, teaching about racism, slavery and civil rights has been central to social studies curricula for decades.

But you know what? This has also been the case at most non-elite schools. The idea that, absent a critical-race-theory lens, most students would be taught American history through the prism of Gone With the Wind or The Birth of a Nation is preposterous.

And parents know it. Which is why the debate over this new political hobbyhorse has people talking past each other.

Comparisons to the tea party protests of 2009 are imperfect but instructive. For liberals, the protests ignited by Barack Obamas stimulus package seemed illegitimate. For some, it was a racist backlash against a Black president. For others, it was a fake movement fueled by astroturfing political grifters. (The grifters eventually took it over, but that came later.) And some saw it as hypocritical. George W. Bush had his bank and auto industry bailouts, and conservatives went along. Why rediscover fiscal restraint now? But for increasingly populist conservatives at that time, more government spending by any administration was a last straw.

When proponents of critical race theory say they are merely proposing a belated corrective to the way American history has been framed, many parents dont buy it, having seen what their children are taught now.

The current battle over critical race theory is a wonderful gift to the Republicans in the short term. The GOP would love to win back white suburban parents with culture-war issues, now that it has no credibility on fiscal matters. But in the long run, this could be disastrous for the party and the country, because the last thing anyone needs is to redefine the culture war as a racial conflict.

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Battle over critical race theory won't benefit GOP in long run - Martins Ferry Times Leader

A Teesside grandad is raising a cuppa for the Trussell Trust.

Malcolm McGregor, 65, from Acklam, volunteered with Middlesbrough Foodbank during the covid-19 pandemic, and he is now encouraging local people to host a tea party with donations going to the anti-poverty charity.

Throughout this unprecedented period, Malcolm helped get thousands of emergency food parcels to people living in crisis in the town, along with a team of volunteers.

Read more: The hospital volunteers who made a massive difference during pandemic - and now have NHS jobs

When I was a young man in Middlesbrough there were lots of opportunities and really good jobs, but in recent years Ive seen more and more people affected by poverty.

The past year has been particularly tough for many of us and I wanted to do something in recognition of the hardship some people were going through, so I thought that helping and supporting the food bank would be a great way to give back, Malcolm said.

He was inspired to volunteer at his local food bank after seeing the levels of destitution and poverty rise across Middlesbrough in recent times.

Malcolm was born and bred in the town, and has dedicated hours of voluntary service to Middlesbrough Foodbank, which is part of the Trussell Trusts network.

He is a regular worshipper at Saint Barnabas in Linthorpe, along with his wife, and the pair became involved with the food bank station at the church.

Retired teacher Malcolm now welcomes people into the food bank, offering them a friendly welcome as they come to collect their food packages.

When I started volunteering, I used to label tins of food but now I work more closely with the people who come into the food bank and need help and support.

Im one of the first faces people will see when they walk into the food bank.

Before the pandemic, people would come in and sit down and I would chat to them and offer them tea, coffee and cakes whilst their order was being processed.

Although this has now changed due to social distancing restrictions, I am still there to offer everyone kind words, words of encouragement.

I feel its important to make that contact and show people that theyre not just coming in for food, but also to meet people who care, who take the time to spend a few minutes with them, Malcolm said.

He is now encouraging people across Middlesbrough to host a Tea for Trussell tea party and raise vital funds for the charity that aims to end the need for food banks in the UK.

Families, friends and colleagues can come together over a brew and cake on a day that suits them, with fundraisers able to host events at home or virtually to raise their mugs with love.

As lockdown restrictions begin to ease, the event will be a brilliant way to get the team together over a cup of tea and cake, while supporting an important cause which is making a difference to thousands of people in crisis.

Its not right that anyone is forced to turn to a food bank and we owe it to each other to make sure that sufficient financial support is in place when we need it the most, Malcolm said.

Whether youre an expert baker or you prefer to buy pre-made goods, Tea for Trussell is a fun way to catch up over a cuppa and make a difference to thousands of people living in crisis.

I would urge everyone across Middlesbrough to get involved and join in with Tea for Trussell.

Its tough to hear about people needing to use food banks to get by, but together we can all make a difference and help build a UK where everyone can afford the basics, Malcolm said.

The charity supports a nationwide network of over 1,300 food bank centres, including the one in Middlesbrough, and provides support to thousands of people in poverty.

Between April 2020 and March 2021, Middlesbrough Foodbank distributed 8,594 emergency food parcels to those facing crisis.

Events engagement manager at the Trussell Trust, Kate Merrified said: We are incredibly grateful to Malcolm and the team at Middlesbrough Foodbank for supporting Tea for Trussell.

Hosting your own tea party is a brilliant way to bring friends, families and colleagues together this summer, while raising vital funds to end the need for food banks.

We all know that some of the best conversations happen over brew, which is why a cup of tea is also at the heart of our food bank network.

The warm welcome of a cuppa has the power to spark conversation and offer support to people coming into the food bank, while helping to uncover and address the underlying issues of poverty.

Free fundraising packs with recipes and top tips are available here or by emailing fundraising@trusselltrust.org

The Trussell Trust is determined to create a future where food banks would not be needed in the UK.

All money raised from Tea for Trussell will go towards the charitys vision of a country where everyone can afford life essentials.

Sign up to Teesside Live's newsletter here.

Kate said: Its not right that any of us need to use a food bank but we know that this can change.

Thats why were urging everyone across Middlesbrough to put the kettle on and get their loved ones involved in this exciting event.

Whether you prefer your tea milky or black, with sugar or without, builders brew or a masala chai, anything goes, as long as youre having fun!

Now is the perfect time to raise both a cuppa and donations, so that together we can build a hunger free future.-

Link:
Malcolm's seen what life on bread line is like for others - and now tells his food bank volunteer story - Teesside Live

She bought some new jams and wanted to put on her hat with them.

This is her face when we saw the neighbors dog when we were walking outside that night before going to bed. She only likes animals!

A friend of mine recently gave birth to a child, and she also has a one-year-old child and a two-year-old child they are raising. I went to spend an afternoon with her children so that she could have a little free time. I played a tea party and had a lot of fun with her daughters. When Kierstyn was two years old, it made me very excited!

I flew to Little Rock that day and recorded some family life radio interviews about my book, Love-centered parenting. This is my first business trip in a year and a half, and it feels very strange! But being able to record a subject that I am passionate about in the studio is so vital!

At the end of the interview, one of the moderators, Ann, asked if she could pray for me. This is such a special moment, and it makes me very lucky-I am very happy that someone in the sound studio took a picture!

This summer, Silas joined a tournament team and loved it. He must cast one of his games in his last game. This is his favorite game!

A week ago, we went to Paducah, Kentucky, Branson, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas for summer road trips. We stopped in Clarksville, Tennessee to let Jesse try the new Black Rifle Coffee Company store!

One of the best ways to keep young children in a hotel room: let them look out the window, watching all the cars and people!

In Paducah, we went to this highly recommended donut shop-Reds Donuts.

Its delicious-a box of 12 different doughnuts is only $8!

We also visited Pipers Tea & Coffee-this is also our recommendation!

He is such a good traveler! But he always acted very happy, getting up from his car seat, being hugged or lying on his stomach in the hotel room!

We went to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri-one of our favorite places! Jesse and I both grew up there, so it left us with a lot of special memories!

Very important first stop: cinnamon buns!

Jesse is not really a roller coaster fan, so I love to ride some bigger roller coasters with the girls.

Kierstyn started her first ride!

At first she was not sure what to think, but in the end she enjoyed it!

Some Harlem globetrotters are in Silver Dollar City, so we must go to see their performances.

After spending a day in Silver Dollar City, we went to Wichita, Kansas to visit our family.

Kierstyn really likes hanging out with Uncle Stephen.

She also likes grandma and grandpas dogs!

One morning, my mother and I went to Bramble Cafe on Eldersley Farm.

She bought me this goat cheese there (its delicious!)

Speaking of deliciousness, the one KS restaurant I always miss in Tennessee is Braums. So we had to stop for some frozen yogurt and burgers!

Caitlin can skate on the skating rink in Kansas, and my mother has to come and see her day.

Kierstyn likes hanging out with her cousins!

We finally went to Chicken N Pickle!

I met a friend I havent seen in 17 years! ! (She drove to pick me up from Oklahoma in the afternoon!)

My parents also invited a group of our friends to a grand picnic in one evening!

We are all going to visit my grandpa (Kierstyn loves his dog!)

We ended our time in KS and took some trolleys in Jesses house!

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A glimpse of the past two weeks (trips to Little Rock, Branson and Wichita) - QNT