What Are Expense Transaction Tags and How Do I Use Them?

Transaction Tags are an important way of ensuring Expense transactions are reported correctly. Because these are related to Compliance law, the Tags in your account will vary based on the jurisdiction you file with.

How are Expenses and Transaction Tags related?

Typically, the standard data entry model in ISP is the Expense is to the Entity that was paid and the Support/Oppose Memo is associated with the Candidate (or Measure) supported. In essence, this is entering what is actually going on, and we’ve built the system logic to automatically take the data entry and report it appropriately.

If you are filing with the FEC, this matches how their forms work. They have two sections for each transaction: (1) who was paid, and (2) the supported FEDERAL Candidate.

However, for Non-Federal Candidates, you do not include the Candidate information; it just shows who the Expense is to. In this example from the FEC guide, you’ll see that the Candidate Name and Office Sought fields are blank.

What are the available Transaction Tags?

In the Specify Support/Oppose section of an Expense, there are four transaction tags listed

IE to Oppose: Use this tag for Independent Expenditures opposing an issue or candidate.
IE to Support: Use this tag for Independent Expenditures in support of other candidates or issues.
Non-IE to Oppose: This tag is most commonly used for member communications.
Non-IE to Support: Use this tag on either a Direct Contribution or an Expense Support/Oppose, commonly known as an Inkind Contribution.

These four tags will cover almost all of the situations in which Support/Oppose Memos are needed for reporting.