Mark Fitzgibbons, a member of the First Tuesday Lunch Group, has an article in yesterday’s Daily Caller about how governments engage, probably unintentionally, in “doxxing.” For those not entirely current on slang, “dox” means

verb (used with or without object), doxed or doxxed, doxing or doxxing.

1. Slang. to publish the private personal information of (another person) or reveal the identity of (an online poster) without the consent of that individual: The professor was doxed by a bitter student who failed her class. Several players doxed the programmer because the final version of the game disappointed them.

Disclosure is often cited as an unalloyed good, as in Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous formulation: “”Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” But remember that Brandeis also said: “I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.”

Mark’s piece shows how government disclosures lead inevitably to doxxing; that is, after all, the point of government-mandated disclosure — to force people to reveal publicly what they would generally prefer to keep private. We live in a far different world today from when many of these disclosure requirements were originally hatched. Today, what was once a shield against miscreants has become a sword used by them.

Like any powerful tool, disclosure can be a force for good. Its use should not be mindless. And those who are subject to it must take special precautions to defend themselves.

 

The House of Representatives and Senate are working quickly to enact tax reform legislation, some of which affects political and tax-exempt organizations. Quarles & Brady, from Chicago, has a nice chart showing the differences between the House and Senate bills on tax-exempt organizations.

[UPDATE: And Jones Day has an even better one: 1503238683_2_House-Senate Tax Bill Comparison Chart December 4 2017 with revenue scores. Thanks to Cathy Livingston.]

In brief, the House bill now contains many more provisions dealing with exempt organizations’ speech, while many of the exempt organizations-related provisions in the Senate bill were removed in the final deliberations, including the major revisions making Section 4958 “intermediate sanctions” provisions much more complicated and onerous.

Not mentioned in the Quarles chart is that Section 13602 of the Senate bill and Section 3803 of the House bill (the language of both versions is identical), subjecting compensation of over $1 million to an additional Section “4960,” described as a tax on excess tax-exempt organization executive compensation, also covers political organizations exempt from tax under Section 527. In other words, PACs and other organizations described under Section 527 are taxed if they pay compensation of more than $1 million.

One additional point  is section 3305 of the House bill and section 13308 of the Senate bill (the language of both versions is the same) which amends IRC § 162(e) to deny business deductions for lobbying expenditures to local government lobbying; state and federal lobbying has long been non-deductible, but local lobbying had previously been deductible under § 162(e)(2) and (7).

Remember Engineer challenges Oregon law prohibiting mathematical criticism without a license? The Oregonian notes that he faced off with the State again in court, and this time Oregon’s Attorney General, “admitted to violating his rights.”