Charities Failed to Support Effort to Increase IRS Monitoring

To the Editor:

For the record, I would like to point out some facts that were not included in Pablo Eisenberg’s article, “IRS Needs More Money to Monitor Rapidly Expanding Nonprofit World,” (February 25.)

Sen. Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, did push for increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service unit that oversees tax-exempt groups as part of the Hurricane Katrina relief bill. He sought to dedicate a percentage of the private-foundation excise tax for the division’s work. This provision was included in the Katrina legislation and passed the Senate. The provision was subject to significant opposition in the House.

Charity leaders in D.C. provided somewhere around zero support for this provision to increase funding for the IRS tax-exempt division through dedication of the private-foundation excise tax.

Due in large part to the failure of the charitable community to actively support the increased funding, the provision was dropped in conference with the House.

Despite this setback, Senator Grassley’s focus on problems in the tax-exempt community, combined with the leadership of then-Commissioner Mark Everson and Steve Miller, a top official in charge of overseeing tax-exempt groups, did result in increased resources for monitoring tax-exempt groups.

Dean Zerbe

National Managing Director

Alliant Group

Washington