A government watchdog filed an updated IRS complaint on Thursday challenging the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) tax-exempt status, The Federalist has learned. The move comes days after the far-left organization was indicted on charges related to allegedly making fraudulent payments to extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Filed by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), the supplemental letter obtained by The Federalist requests that the IRS probe the SPLC’s tax-exempt status in light of the recent charges returned by an Alabama-based grand jury. CASA previously submitted a similar complaint with the IRS against the SPLC in October 2025 over what it described as “partisan political activit[ies]” that it claimed “are grounds for immediate revocation of charitable status.”
As The Federalist previously reported, the SPLC has regularly maligned conservative organizations by classifying them as “hate groups” alongside actual extremist groups. The SPLC has even directed attacks against The Federalist.
[READ: ‘FBI Does It Too’: Media Hacks Go All Out To Downplay SPLC Indictment]
The federal indictment announced earlier this week charged the SPLC with 11 counts of “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering,” according to the DOJ. The charges notably alleged that, from 2014 to 2023, the far-left group paid more than $3 million in donor money to individuals affiliated with racist organizations including the KKK and United Klans of America as part of a purported “covert” informant network.
“Given these new criminal allegations from the DOJ cited in this supplemental complaint, we believe this substantially increases the likelihood of an IRS investigation given the severity of the many federal crimes they are being investigated for and the large sum of money that was potentially fraudulently obtained from their donors,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick said in a statement to The Federalist.
In its supplemental letter, CASA highlighted many of the federal indictment’s key charges against the SPLC. This included the allegation that the SPLC paid “over $270,000 between 2015 and 2023 to a field source (referred to as F-37 in the Indictment) who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the now infamous 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virgina, allegedly making racist posts under the SPLC’s supervision and helping to coordinate transportation to the event.”
“It is hardly in the public interest to stoke anger by making it appear as if hate groups are more prominent than they actually are,” the complaint reads. “It is certainly not in the public interest to pay those groups while advertising to donors that they are fighting the very hate groups that SPLC paid.”
CASA contended that the SPLC’s alleged activities “are grounds for an immediate investigation and potential revocation of charitable status.” While such a move “would not shut the SPLC’s doors,” it would ensure the far-left group “simply no longer receive[s] the tax benefits extended to non-political organizations that further the public interest listed within Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.”
An investigation “would also likely require a subsequent determination of when the revocation should be backdated to ensure that the SPLC could not improperly benefit from its partisan and other potentially illegal activities,” the filing reads. “Given the far-reaching activities of the SPLC that have been uncovered and investigated by the DOJ, Congress, news outlets, and watchdog organizations in recent years, we believe that the American people are entitled to a full investigation into the potentially illegal activities of SPLC as outlined in our prior complaint and in this supplemental letter.”
The IRS did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
