Scientology Won Tax Exemption on the Merits - 1997-03-18

It is absurd to treat as suspicious the committee's direction to the I.R.S. tax analysts assigned to process the church's paperwork not to consider any substantive matters raised by the applications. Based on materials submitted to the committee contained in the public record, the seniormost officials responsible for exempt-organization matters had determined that the church and its constituent organizations satisfied all of the requirements for tax exemption. To have lower level employees substantively review the church's applications would have duplicated what the committee had been doing for two years.
Wikipedia cite:
{{cite news | first = Monique E. | last = Yingling | title = Scientology Won Tax Exemption on the Merits | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9805E3D91238F93BA25750C0A961958260 | work = Letter to the Editor | publisher = New York Times | date = March 18, 1997 | accessdate = January 14, 2017 }}