Allegedly, Scientology officials, including Church leader David Miscavige, paid private investigators to acquire some unspecified compromising information on Goldberg during his time as commissioner, and then strode into his office without an appointment one day to demand terms.[1][2] The meeting was not listed on Goldberg’s appointment calendar, which was obtained by The New York Times through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
While details are not known, it was under Goldberg’s administration that the long running IRS/Scientology legal conflict ended, though it took two years (under two other Commissioners) to work out the details.[3] Scientology received a unique tax exemption in 1993 and the IRS has refused to release the agreement, even after a FOIA request by the NYT and when requested by the court in the Sklar case.[4] (A draft version of the agreement was leaked to the WSJ and published late in 1997.)[5]
In early 2002, Judge Silverman, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote the following:
“If the IRS does, in fact, give preferential treatment to members of the Church of Scientology — allowing them a special right to claim deductions that are contrary to law and rightly disallowed to everybody else — then the proper course of action is a lawsuit to stop to that policy. The remedy is not to require the IRS to let others claim the improper deduction, too.”[6]
References
- Frantz, Douglas (1997-03-19). “Scientology Denies an Account Of an Impromptu I.R.S. Meeting”. New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
- Staff (1997-04-02). “Church Of Scientology Denies Impromptu Meeting With US Tax Agency”. The New York Beacon.
- Frantz, Douglas (1997-12-31). “$12.5 Million Deal With I.R.S. Lifted Cloud Over Scientologists”. New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
- Frantz, Douglas (1997-03-09). “Scientology’s Puzzling Journey From Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt”. New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
- “Scientologists, IRS Settle Dispute”, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 1997.
- Sklar v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 00-70753, Tax Court No. 1556-97, Amended Opinion, Appeal from the United States Tax Court, Amended, February 27, 2002.