President Obama has once again pushed to limit charitable deduction in the budget he sent to Congress this past Monday. This budget is the seventh budget President Obama has sent to Congress that calls for a limit on tax breaks…
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that audits of tax-exempt groups have been on the decline. Due to its lack of resources and a dwindling workforce, the IRS has only reviewed 0.7 percent of filing charities’ tax returns. Based…
We reported several weeks ago that the U.S. Senate was planning to vote on an extension of three lapsed tax breaks for charitable contributions. The three tax breaks include enhanced deduction for conservation easements, donations from retirement accounts, and breaks…
An article published yesterday by the online newspaper, ProPublica (which claims to focus on stories with “moral force”), is getting a lot of attention. In the essay entitled, The Wall Street Takeover of Charity, writer Jesse Eisinger goes to great…
Ron Wyden, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman, expects Congress to pass legislation to extend three lapsed tax breaks for charitable contributions. Such extensions would be made permanent. The three tax breaks include the following: enhanced deduction for conservation easements, donations…
Giving Tuesday is a day that gives the world a chance to celebrate charities. In the past, it has been known as a day that follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the increasing support shows it stands out on…
A big development has occurred in a story we’ve been following for quite some time. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that some of the missing e-mails belonging to former IRS employee Lois Lerner have been found. Lerner…
An article out this morning in The Chronicle of Philanthropy discusses the current trend in donor-advised funds. According to the story, gifts to donor-advised funds were up 23% in 2013. That adds up to a massive figure of $17 billion…
January 2023 UPDATE: the links to the Overhead Myth letter in the article below have been disabled due to the site no longer being active, however the Overhead Myth is important enough of a topic for us to keep the…
The IRS released two notices (Notice 2014-65 and 2014-68) in late October that state the following: President Obama has stated that the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa is a public health emergency, a humanitarian crisis, and a…