Treasury Drafts Reviews That Could Strip Tax-Exempt Status From Soros Network, SPLC, and CAIR

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the IRS are preparing reviews that could revoke 501(c)(3) status for Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, three people familiar with the matter told the New York Post. Officials described a blueprint, still being drafted inside Bessent’s circle, that would use existing tax law and a 2025 Trump executive order aimed at nonprofits with a “substantial illegal purpose.” Penalties under discussion range from corrective fines and back taxes to full revocation, which would put an organization on the 21 percent federal corporate rate. The Treasury Department declined to comment on the Post’s report. No revocation notices have been issued.

A Post analysis of the groups’ latest IRS filings estimated that, if taxed at 21 percent on 2024 income, the three would have owed about $165 million. Almost all of that figure — $163.6 million — was attributed to the Soros network. The same analysis put the SPLC at roughly $354,000 and 17 CAIR chapters combined at about $860,000. Those numbers are hypothetical. They assume revocation and apply the corporate rate to reported income; they are not assessments the IRS has billed. An Open Society spokesperson told the Post that “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.” Sources told the paper some officials worry that adding high-profile domestic political targets such as the SPLC and the Soros network could trigger lawsuits and slow action against groups they view as terror-linked, including CAIR. Bessent enlisted Tony Saffier, a former special-operations veteran and AI executive, to lead an interagency task force on nonprofit review. Bessent said last October on the Charlie Kirk Show that work compiling a list had begun. Last month he said Treasury was “expanding its efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable and non-profit structures as vehicles for illicit finance” and examining “where tax-exempt status has been exploited.”

The 2025 order, issued in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness context and cited by officials as a policy template, defined “substantial illegal purpose” to include aiding immigration-law violations, supporting terrorism, a pattern of illegal discrimination, and repeated state-law violations such as trespass, disorderly conduct, vandalism, public nuisance, or highway obstruction. Section 501(c)(3) already bars substantial political campaign intervention and requires an exempt purpose. Section 501(p) suspends exemption for organizations designated as terrorist. Revocation is an IRS process with notice and appeal; it is not automatic because an executive order names a category of conduct. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith has separately referred several groups, including CAIR-California, to Treasury and the IRS. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked Bessent in December 2025 to investigate CAIR’s exemption, citing alleged Brotherhood and Hamas ties and the Holy Land Foundation record. The FBI previously limited formal outreach to CAIR. CAIR denies supporting terrorism. A federal grand jury earlier this year charged the SPLC with fraud related to alleged payments to people associated with extremist groups; the SPLC said the money paid informants used to gather intelligence and has contested the case. Bessent has said directors and trustees could face accountability beyond loss of exemption, including asset actions if a group is tied to a designated foreign terrorist organization. IRS determinations, if they come, will be separate from the Post’s source account of a draft plan.