Write-Offs

* Rep. Amo Houghton, a New York Republican, is the next chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. He replaces Nancy L. Johnson, a Connecticut Republican. The subcommittee oversees the I.R.S. During Ms. Johnson’s tenure, the panel crafted legislation to give the revenue service new powers to crack down on charity officials who receive overly generous financial benefits. A version of the legislation was enacted into law in 1996.

* Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the I.R.S. to investigate eight churches for distributing voter guides in behalf of the Christian Coalition two days before the November 1998 election. Americans United says the guides were improper “partisan campaign material.” Under federal law, churches and charities must not publicly endorse or campaign against candidates for political office. The Christian Coalition has denied that the guides violated federal law.

* The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, has backed a lower court’s decision that an organization set up at a Vermont lounge to sell lottery tickets to raise money for good works did not qualify as a charity. The I.R.S. had originally ruled that KJ’s Fund Raisers did not qualify in part because it could not prove that its operation would not improperly give the lounge a financial lift (The Chronicle, October 16, 1997).