NOMnuts: Purloined Tax Return Theory DEBUNKED

As you may recall, about a week ago HRC received and published an un-redacted  National Organization for Marriage tax return showing that Mitt Romney was a donor in 2008. Huffington Post picked up the story as well.

According to NOM, after some fundamentalist sleuthing they have determined that the questioned tax return must have come from the IRS. The reason being that it has a numeric code angled across each page and a legend at the top reading "THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIPS."

Then they indulge in some bizarre conspiracy theory hinting that it's Obama's fault because Joe Solmonese is leaving HRC to be a co-chair of the re-election campaign. Sure Brian. Sure.

As usual, NOM is wrong!


Turns out that tax returns thus marked are not limited to the offices of the Internal Revenue Service.

• Here is the tax return of Humane Watch from their website
• Here's another return  residing on SCRIBD. This one from the Rose Bowl Committee
• Continuing the sports theme, here's one from the Fiesta Bowl, also on SCRIBD

These returns have a few things in common:

1. They are all marked "THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIPS."
2. They all have a diagonal file number
3. They are all publicly available

While it is true that the NOM return in question contained information not publicly available, the fact is that it could have come from an employee or their tax preparer. The fact that it is marked as they demonstrate is irrelevant to its origin.