June 14, 2013 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Senate Finance Committee released a report Thursday outlining options for overhauling laws governing the activities of tax-exempt organizations and the value of charitable deductions.
“Tax reform provides an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of charitable-giving incentives and the tax benefits for organizations serving public interests,” the document states.
It then suggests several goals for tax changes that the committee should consider. It offers no obvious support for any specific idea. Instead, it provides links to opinions, research, and testimony the committee has gathered over the past several weeks for changing the rules governing approximately 1.5 million tax-exempt groups with $2.7-trillion in assets.
The broad questions that the committee focuses on are:
- Is the charitable deduction fair to all taxpayers and will changing it reduce giving?
- Should political activity by nonprofits be permitted to expand or be further restricted?
- Should the government tax more of the commercial activities that tax-exempt organizations conduct?
- Should more “be done to monitor charities, for example, to ensure that they are not spending a large share of their donations on fundraising and large salaries for their founders?”
