September 13, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
President Obama’s new jobs bill, released yesterday, offers tax credits to nonprofits that hire veterans and long-term unemployed people.
When Mr. Obama outlined his plans last week, it was not clear whether those credits would apply to tax-exempt organizations.
But the bill specifically mentions that they would be available to nonprofits and public universities—applying to payroll taxes, which nonprofit employers pay, instead of to income taxes.
A nonprofit employer could get a tax credit of up to $1,560 for hiring a veteran who has been unemployed for at least four weeks and up to $3,640 for a veteran who has been out of work for at least six months. It could get a tax credit of up to $2,600 for hiring any other individual who has been unemployed for at least six months. The credits are about two-thirds those available to for-profit groups.*
Noting that nonprofit employees make up 10 percent of the work force, Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a coalition of charities and foundations, praised the bill in a statement for recognizing “the importance of including all employers in their effort to increase the number of jobs.”
* This sentence has been corrected to reflect updated information about the amount of the credits available to nonprofits.
