Americans for Prosperity Reported No Political Campaign Activities for 2007-2010

According to an article posted on the NY Times website, the section 501(c)(4) Americans for Prosperity reported spending $1.3 million on electioneering communications to the Federal Election Commission during 2010 (see FEC filings) but reported no political activity expenditures on its IRS Form 990 for the same period.  Form 990 filings for the previous three calendar years (2007 thru 2009) available on Guidestar also report no direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office (Part IV, Question 3 of the 2008 and 2009 forms, Part VI, Question 81 of the 2007 form).  As noted in the article, I reviewed three publicly available Americans for Prosperity ads from 2010, and all of them are in my judgment clearly political campaign activity as defined for federal tax purposes.  According to the article, a spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity asserts that the group “is in full compliance with its tax reporting requirements.”

LHM