The IRS doesn’t want charitable organizations to have links to political campaigns on their websites, and on July 28, the director of IRS Exempt Organization Examinations issued a ukase on "Political Campaign Activity on the Internet."
The IRS will now open examinations of charities that have a direct link to a political action committee or candidate website on the charity’s website. They will also open an examination if they find a charity has linked to an unrelated 501(c)(4) advocacy organization or commerical site that itself links to a candidate or PAC site where it is intended by the charity to indirectly link the viewer to the political site.
Cases involving "related" 501(c)(4) organizations are more complicated and the IRS is less likely to take action to indirect links to political sites by that route. However, a "fact and circumstance" is how many clicks it takes to get to the political site. If it is really easy, that is a problem.
I’m sure IRS agents love this duty, siting in front of a computer 8 hours a day and websurfing. Must be much better work than a "shoe box" audit that would actually yield more revenue to the treasury! In any event, all you charities out there with websites and policy issues, considered yourself warned!