January 26, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Internal Revenue Service plans to revoke the tax-exempt status of a total of 30 nonprofit credit-counseling organizations. The IRS says the groups are not providing adequate financial education to their clients in some cases and in other cases funnel too much money to their chief executives and for-profit entities connected with the organizations.
Last year, the IRS pulled the tax exemption of five of the 30 credit-counseling organizations, including A Better Way Credit Counseling, in Greenacres, Fla., and the National Center for Debt Elimination, in North Huntington, Pa. The revenue service says it is notifying the remaining 25 groups that they are about to lose their charitable status. An IRS spokesman said the revenue service has investigated a total of about 60 credit-counseling groups. He said those organizations account for half of the revenue of the nation’s counseling groups.
