Source: United States Senator for New Jersey Bob Menendez
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees national tax policy, blasted the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) for its continued and flagrant violation of the laws that govern tax-exempt organizations. At yesterday’s Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight entitled “Laws and Enforcement Governing the Political Activities of Tax Exempt Entities,” Sen. Menendez highlighted the organization’s failure to disclose transgressions on their annual filings to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the agency’s failure to investigate the irregularities.
“Despite the NRA’s stated primary mission to promote public safety, the organization has become a fearmongering political media company promoting a lifestyle of loving assault rifles equipped with high-capacity magazines and calling anyone who questions their practice as socialists who are just trying to ‘take them away’,” said Sen. Menendez. “The privileges of being a tax-exempt organization should not come without accountability. It’s time for the IRS to fully investigate the repeated and flagrant violation of the principles for being granted this tax-exempt status.”
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The Senator also questioned whether the NRA’s overvalued payments to its public relations firm or diverted millions of dollars from the NRA for its executives to: travel to Africa, Lake Como, the Bahamas, and Budapest; purchase designer suits; provide gifts to friends; purchase memberships at golf clubs; and arrange for golden parachute deals that included million-dollar mansions and seven-figure salaries that would warrant further examination by the IRS.
Sen. Menendez has been a leader in the fight to hold the NRA accountable. In September 2020, and March 2021 he led the call for the NRA to be removed from the list of charities eligible to solicit and receive contributions from federal employees during the yearly Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Sen. Menendez is also the author of the Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act, legislation what would end the NRA-backed ban on the preservation and disclosure of gun records.
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