March 25, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
Two major coalitions of non-profit organizations have written to the Internal Revenue Service, urging it to spend more on charity regulation, publish much more information to educate charities on important issues, and try to end a “brain drain” of experienced workers who have left the tax agency in recent years.
The recommendations were submitted in joint letters from Independent Sector, a national coalition of charities and grant makers, and the Council on Foundations, an association of grant-making foundations and corporations.
Last year, Commissioner of Internal Revenue Charles O. Rossotti announced that he would consolidate the service’s bureaucracy into four units, one of which will include the tax-exempt sector of charities, pension plans, and state and local governments.
The new tax-exempt unit, which is expected to be in business by October 1, needs to be structured so that it can coordinate its goals with other offices of the I.R.S., said Independent Sector and the Council on Foundations. A perception exists that charity regulators and workers in other I.R.S. departments have sometimes failed to coordinate communications and priorities, which has created “delays and backlogs and inconsistency of positions,” the two coalitions wrote.
