Charities Dodge Dangerous New IRS Proposal

Ministries who were fearing a new IRS intrusion have scored a big victory.

Essentially, the IRS wanted to use charities to collect and turn over your Social Security numbers as part of their reporting on donations.

The American Center for Law and Justice called it "a horrible idea and a disastrous power play by the Obama administration's IRS."

The Treasury Department dropped the idea after overwhelming public opposition.

The move had caused great concern, partly because of the way the IRS targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative non-profits several years ago.

"After the IRS targeting of conservative non-profit organizations, how could we possibly trust this out of control bureaucratic nightmare?" Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, wondered.

There were also concerns that all that information could be hacked from charities if they were required to collect it.

Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation points out that Social Security numbers are already susceptible to theft because even the U.S. government can't seem to keep them safe.

"As you know there were these big cyber attacks on OPM [Office of Personnel Management]. They lost 20 million Social Security numbers and this would make charities a target for cyber-criminals," he explained.

"If a cyber-criminal has the option of attacking a charity and trying to get this information or attacking a high priced business or the government, which has a lot more security protocols in place, well who are they going to go for?" von Spakovsky said.