The Trump administration's Treasury Department is building a case to strip tax-exempt status from George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, groups officials say have been masquerading as charities while advancing political agendas.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's inner circle has drafted a blueprint for sweeping IRS audits of nonprofits that officials believe are abusing their 501(c)(3) designations, Newsmax reported, citing a New York Post investigation based on three sources familiar with internal policy deliberations. Two of those sources described the blueprint directly. The reviews could result in corrective fines, massive back payments, civil penalties, or full revocation of tax-exempt status, a move that would subject the targeted organizations to the standard 21% federal corporate tax rate.
The effort traces back to a 2025 executive order President Trump signed targeting nonprofits operating with a "substantial illegal purpose." That order opened the door for the IRS to fine or strip tax-exempt status from charities the administration considers tied to political violence, protests, or radical ideologies. Bessent confirmed on the "Charlie Kirk Show" in October 2025 that work on compiling a target list had already begun.
To lead the interagency task force, Bessent enlisted Tony Saffier, a former special operations veteran and AI executive. The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, declined multiple requests from the Post to comment on the initiative.
The financial stakes dwarf anything most nonprofit accountability efforts have produced. The Post estimated that if the three most prominent targets, the Soros-linked Open Society Foundations, the SPLC, and CAIR, lost their tax-exempt status and owed taxes at the 21% corporate rate on their 2024 income, the combined hypothetical liability would reach roughly $165 million.
The Soros network alone would account for approximately $163.6 million. The SPLC's estimated share came in at about $354,000, while CAIR's 17 chapters would owe a combined $860,000.
A spokesperson for the Soros nonprofit pushed back hard.
"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."
That framing, political persecution dressed up as tax enforcement, is the predictable defense. But the administration's case rests on conduct, not ideology, and at least one of the named targets is already facing federal criminal charges.
The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted earlier this year on charges of wire fraud, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Federal prosecutors allege the SPLC secretly funneled donor money to informants inside extremist organizations, including one who was part of an online leadership group involved in planning the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Heidi Beirich, former director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, was charged separately in the same federal case in August 2026. The SPLC denied wrongdoing and said its informant program was used to infiltrate extremist groups, protect staff, and gather intelligence, some of which, the organization said, was shared with law enforcement.
An organization under federal indictment for fraud and money laundering while claiming charitable tax benefits is precisely the kind of case that makes the administration's audit blueprint hard to dismiss as partisan overreach.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations occupies a different category on the administration's list. Officials are treating CAIR as a national security target, distinct from the domestic initiative applied to the Soros network and the SPLC. Federal prosecutors previously named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing prosecution, a designation that has shadowed the organization for years.
CAIR adamantly denies ties to terrorist organizations or illicit foreign funding. But the unindicted co-conspirator label, combined with the national security framing from current officials, puts the organization in a position where its tax-exempt status faces scrutiny from multiple directions at once.
The audit effort extends beyond the three headline names. Officials are also scrutinizing the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an anti-corporate advocacy group; the Athena Coalition, which targets Amazon; MediaJustice, a left-leaning media watchdog; and the Strategic Organizing Center, whose parent union is the Service Employees International Union. The common thread, as described by the Post's sources, is that officials view these groups as political operations sheltering behind charitable tax status.
The breadth of the list raises a practical question: how far can an administration push IRS enforcement against nonprofits before the effort runs into legal guardrails designed to prevent exactly this kind of politically targeted tax action?
The nonprofit Protect Democracy has already filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS seeking records on whether the administration has used the tax code against perceived political opponents. The group raised concerns that the administration could bypass federal restrictions intended to prevent partisan interference in tax enforcement.
Samuel Handwerger, a tax policy professor at the University of Maryland, offered a measured assessment of what the targeted organizations actually face. He told the Post:
"If I were assessing real-world exposure for these organizations, I would rank it: bank de-risking first, donor and grant maker chill second, examination costs third, and actual revocation a distant fourth."
In other words, even if full revocation remains unlikely for most targets, the audit process itself could inflict serious damage. Banks may pull away. Donors may hesitate. Legal costs mount. The IRS does not need to win every case to change the landscape for politically active nonprofits.
Handwerger also flagged a longer-term concern that cuts across party lines:
"Every administration inherits the precedents of the last one. Organizations across the political spectrum have an interest in the answer [to this question], and many of them have not yet noticed that."
That warning deserves attention. But it also deserves context. The groups on this list are not facing scrutiny because they hold unpopular opinions. One is under federal indictment. Another was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-financing case. A third operates a global network that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars through tax-exempt channels while bankrolling political causes worldwide. If the tax code means anything, it has to mean that organizations like these cannot simply declare themselves charities and walk away from accountability.
For years, left-leaning nonprofits have operated under the assumption that their tax-exempt status was untouchable, that no administration would risk the political cost of challenging them. That assumption is being tested. And the organizations now scrambling to cry persecution might want to start by explaining what, exactly, they did with the money.
