October 18, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Rep. Nick Lampson, Democrat of Texas, has taken a new tack in the campaign to persuade Congress to allow people to continue donating money from their individual retirement accounts to charities tax-free.
Mr. Lampson has introduced the Charitable Tax Relief Act of 2007 — H.R. 3596 — which would make permanent the legislation that allows such donations when people are age 70 1/2 or older, a provision that is set to expire at the end of this year.
Unlike another bill that has been introduced to extend the legislation, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act of 2007, Representative Lampson’s bill does not expand the tax break in any way.
“I’ve found that if you keep these things as simple as they can possibly be, things go through a little more quickly,” Mr. Lampson said.
Mr. Lampson said he wants to extend the IRA provision, which was enacted as part of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, because it has been effective in encouraging people to make charitable donations they would not otherwise make.
The National Committee on Planned Giving, a professional association in Indianapolis, found in a survey that charities received more than $104-million in IRA gifts from August 2006, when the Pension Protection Act was enacted, through late September 2007.
Meanwhile, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act continues to attract co-sponsors, with more than 15 new representatives and senators adding their names to the measure over the past month. The House bill, H.R. 1419, has 83 cosponsors in all.
That bill would allow donors to give to donor-advised funds and other entities excluded from the existing IRA charitable-donation law, lift a $100,000 limit on annual gifts, and allow people at age 59 1/2 to put their IRA funds into charitable remainder trusts and other types of gifts that also produce income for the donor for a set time period.
