Soros, SPLC, CAIR Face Trump Admin Tax Scrutiny
Michael Katz – George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations are among the nonprofits that could lose their tax-exempt status as the Trump administration cracks down on what officials consider “bogus” charities, the New York Post reported Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
Treasury Department officials are preparing a sweeping audit of organizations deemed to be abusing the federal tax code, the three people briefed on the department’s internal policy deliberations told the Post.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s inner circle is drafting a blueprint that could ultimately strip noncompliant organizations of their 501(c)(3) status, two of the people familiar with the plans told the Post. The reviews could result in massive back payments and civil penalties, the sources said.
The initiative leans in part on a 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump targeting nonprofits operating with a “substantial illegal purpose,” which the Post said paved the way for the IRS to issue fines or even strip the tax-exempt status of charities allegedly tied to political violence, protests or radical ideologies.
Officials have also scrutinized a number of anti-corporate and labor-aligned advocacy groups that could end up on the list, the three insiders told the Post. They include the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, the anti-Amazon Athena Coalition, left-leaning watchdog MediaJustice and the Strategic Organizing Center, along with its parent union, the SEIU.
The initiative is already drawing legal scrutiny. Protect Democracy has sued Treasury and the IRS seeking records on whether the administration has sought to use the tax code against perceived political opponents. The organization has raised concerns that the administration could bypass federal restrictions intended to prevent partisan interference in tax enforcement.
The Treasury Department declined multiple requests by the Post to comment, but Bessent confirmed in October 2025 on the “Charlie Kirk Show” that work on compiling the list had begun.
The Treasury Department oversees the IRS, giving Bessent significant influence over the agency as it scrutinizes nongovernmental organizations and charities accused of abusing their tax-exempt status.
Formally stripping a group of its 501(c)(3) status can be a lengthy process that takes years, according to the Post, involving IRS audits, internal administrative appeals and potentially litigation in federal tax court.
To help with the review, Bessent enlisted Tony Saffier, a former special operations veteran and AI executive recently tapped to spearhead the interagency task force, the Post reported.
Penalties under consideration range from corrective fines to full revocation of tax-exempt status, which could subject the nonprofits to the standard 21% federal corporate tax rate.
The Post estimated that the three organizations collectively would have owed about $165 million in federal income taxes for 2024 if their reported income had been subject to the 21% corporate tax rate.
The Post attributed nearly all of that hypothetical tax bill to the Soros network, estimating its liability at $163.6 million. It estimated the SPLC’s at roughly $354,000 and the combined liability of 17 CAIR chapters at about $860,000.
A spokesperson for the Soros nonprofit told the Post: “Threatening any nonprofit’s tax status for political reasons would be nothing more than an illegal attempt to target and stifle work that the administration disagrees with.”
The Post reported that while the administration is scrutinizing OSF and the SPLC under its domestic initiative, officials are treating CAIR as a national security target.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is under federal indictment on charges including wire fraud, making false statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Heidi Beirich, the former director of its Intelligence Project, also was recently charged in the case.
Prosecutors allege the SPLC secretly funneled donor money to informants inside extremist organizations, including one who was part of an online leadership group involved in planning the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The SPLC has denied wrongdoing and said its informant program was used to infiltrate extremist groups, protect its staff and gather intelligence, some of which was shared with law enforcement.
Meanwhile, CAIR has long faced scrutiny over alleged ties to Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing prosecution. CAIR adamantly denies ties to terrorist organizations or illicit foreign funding.
Samuel Handwerger, a tax policy professor at the University of Maryland, told the Post the fear of losing an exemption misses the larger picture.
“If I were assessing real-world exposure for these organizations, I would rank it: bank de-risking first, donor and grant maker chill second, examination costs third, and actual revocation a distant fourth,” Handwerger said.
He warned that expanding executive power to target specific groups sets a dangerous precedent.
“Every administration inherits the precedents of the last one,” he said. “Organizations across the political spectrum have an interest in the answer [to this question], and many of them have not yet noticed that.”
SF Source Newsmax Aug 2026