Soft money disclosure information became searchable and downloadable on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) site July 1st, meeting a deadline set by Congress last November. The disclosure information is reported to the IRS by political action committees (PACs) under a law passed in 2000. The website only allows searches of reports that filed electronically. Over the past two years, most reports have been filed on paper and are available in PDF format. Beginning this month, PACs that raise or spend more than $50,000 a year will be required to file their reports electronically, so that the amount of searchable information will increase over time.

The IRS site allows both basic and advanced searches, contains a tip sheet to make it easier, and a database download feature. For example, searches can be made by the name of the organization, contributors, occupations of contributors, range of contributions by size, date of contribution and purpose of expenditures.

Political action committees are exempt under Section 527 of the tax code. Hard money contributions and expenditures on federal elections, which include direct campaign activities, are reported to the Federal Election Commission, which already has a searchable database. Before 2000, soft money contributions and expenditures, which are not used to expressly call for election or defeat of a federal candidate, were not reported.

Public Citizen, which lobbied to make PAC disclosure information searchable, has issued a press release on the new site.

The IRS is seeking comments on reporting forms for PACs, including Form 8871, Political Organization Notice of Section 527 Status and Form 8453-X, Political Organization Declaration for Electron Filing of Notice of Section 527 Status. In a July 3, 2003 Federal Register Notice the IRS set September 2nd as a deadline for comments on whether the information in the forms has practical utility and if the quality of the information collected can be improved.