Did you know that a new regulation proposed by the IRS is asking church officials to voluntarily collect Social Security numbers for everyone who donates more than $250 a year? If this gives you cause to pause, you have until December 16 to speak up!

CBNNews.com is reporting on this proposed regulation which impacts non-profit organizations that fall into the 501(c)(3) category, which includes churches and other religious and charitable groups. Currently, churches are required to send an acknowledgement letter to their donors for their tax records; but this new proposal goes much further.

“What the IRS is saying is well you can skip doing that if you get the donor’s Social Security number and then you send us a spread sheet at the end of the year with those Social Security numbers,” says Hans von Spakovsky, legal expert with The Heritage Foundation.

As Spakovsky correctly points out, Americans already don’t trust the IRS after they targeted particular conservative groups and released confidential information to the public. There’s also the fear that this voluntary regulation is merely laying the ground work for what will eventually become mandatory.

“I think this is the camel’s nose under the tent,” Spakovsky told CBN’s Beltway Buzz.

The IRS claims these worries are founded upon “major misimpressions and inaccuracies.”

According to Fox News, the agency said the change was proposed in September in part because some taxpayers who were being audited — or “under exam” — say they lost their donation records and that charities also having a record would help them verify deductions.

“This project was prompted because some … organizations and donors were interested in using this option,” the agency stated. “This proposal would impose no mandatory changes to existing rules.”

The problem with this statement is that it’s not enough to assuage the fears of Americans who no longer believe the agency has the public’s best interests at heart –  especially not after they admitted to deliberately targeting conservative-leaning groups between April 2010 and April 2012.

And the fact that they also disclosed confidential information on these targeted taxpayers also raises red flags among the populace. In an age of rampant identity theft, most major retailers are moving away from using anything more than the last four digits of an individual’s social security number.

“When the whole rest of the world from a technological view is moving away from using Social Security numbers, the IRS is moving toward them,” Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam told Fox.  “I think we ought not go that route right now.”

When it comes to identity theft, “Charities are not well equipped to deal with this,” he said. “We’ve had for-profit companies — some of the biggest companies in the world — that have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars trying to protect their confidential data. And it’s been hacked and it’s been breached.”

For many Americans, this new proposed regulation is just another example of government over-reach.

“You know, we have all these federal agencies that have created this basically fourth branch of government, the administrative state and all of them have far too much power,” Spakovsky said. “The regulations they issue often are very intrusive and this is just another example of that kind of a problem.”

The regulation is open for public comment until December 16. Click here to let your voice be heard!

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