November 24, 2003 - By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer<br /><br />WASHINGTON (AP) -- The IRS has begun auditing the National Education Association, which has allocated millions of dollars to elect pro-education candidates while reporting on tax forms that it does not spend union dues on politics. <br />While promising cooperation, the president of the nation's largest teachers' union is also pledging to "vigorously defend our constitutional right to speak to our members about the role of politics in public education." <br /><br />NEA spokeswoman Kathleen Lyons said Monday the audit began last week. "It will be a complete, thorough audit," she said. "The IRS has not singled out any particular aspect of our activities." <br /><br />But Reg Weaver, the union's president, said the "NEA will not be silenced" by the audit or complaints from a conservative foundation that it has wrongly engaged in political activities without disclosing them. <br /><br />Union members "have a right to be involved in politics. Our organization will not back down in the face of those who want to bully us out of our rights as Americans," Weaver said. <br /><br />The NEA has tax-exempt status as a union but must report political expenses "direct and indirect" on its tax return. Some of those expenses could be considered taxable by the IRS. The IRS defines a political expense as "one intended to influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment of anyone to a federal, state, or local public office." <br /><br />The tax agency is prohibited from publicly discussing audits of taxpayers. <br /><br />The Associated Press reviewed the NEA's filings from years 1993 through 1999, reporting in a series of stories that the NEA has said on its tax returns that no union dues were spent on politics despite extensive internal memos laying out numerous union-funded political activities. <br /><br />Hundreds of pages of internal NEA documents reviewed by AP showed the 2.7 million-member union spent millions of dollars to help elect pro-education candidates, produce political training guides and gather teachers' voting records. <br /><br />For instance, a July 1999 strategic plan stated the union budgeted $4.9 million for the 2000 election for such things as "organizational partnerships with political parties, campaign committees and political organizations." <br /><br />Part of the money, the document said, would be spent on a "national political strategy" that involves "candidate recruitment, independent expenditures, early voting and vote-by-mail programs in order to strengthen support for pro-public education candidates and ballot measures." <br /><br />The documents were gathered by Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm that has filed complaints with the IRS seeking an audit and, more recently, a criminal investigation of whether the NEA evaded taxes. <br /><br />Landmark received the documents as part of a lawsuit it filed that forced the IRS to disclose records identifying members of Congress who had asked the tax agency to audit political opponents. <br /><br />Mark Levin, president of Landmark, hailed the IRS audit and said Monday the NEA "has diverted tens of millions of dollars in membership dues to influence political campaigns, for which it hasn't paid a wooden nickel in taxes." <br /><br />"It appears that the NEA may finally be called to account for its failure to tell the government - and its members - how much it is spending on politics." <br /><br />Marcus Owens, a tax attorney who headed the IRS tax-exempt organizations division, said it was not unusual for the agency to wait three years to act after Landmark's 2000 audit request. <br /><br />He said an audit of a major organization like the NEA could only be conducted if high-level agents were available.
