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28,000 Charities Had Tax-Exempt Status Revoked After Trump Administration ‘Error,’ Lawmakers Say

This article is more than 3 years old.
Updated Oct 21, 2020, 02:02pm EDT

Topline

More than 30,000 nonprofit organizations in the U.S. have had their tax-exempt status automatically revoked by the Internal Revenue Service since May, Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, after an “apparent error” by the IRS may have erroneously revoked thousands of organizations’ tax-exempt status.

Key Facts

Nearly 31,500 nonprofits, including nearly 28,000 charities, have had their tax-exempt status revoked since May 15, and the number of charities to have their status revoked is up by 20% over the same time period last year, according to Democratic lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Lawmakers on the committee’s Oversight subcommittee, led by chair Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.), wrote to Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig Tuesday asking why so many charities had their status revoked during the Covid-19 pandemic and ahead of the “most popular time of year” for charitable giving.

The lawmakers suggest the issue appears to be a mistake by the IRS after the tax filing deadline for organizations was changed from May 15 to July 15, as the IRS’s Automatic Revocation of Exemption List shows many organizations had their exempt status revoked on May 15.

Tax-exempt status is automatically revoked if an organization doesn't submit required forms for three years in a row, meaning that some organizations might have accidentally had their status revoked if they didn’t submit the form by May 15, even if they later submitted it by the extended July deadline.

The lawmakers also note that “processing and correspondence backlogs” at the IRS could have prevented some organizations’ forms from being received by the IRS in time to keep their tax-exempt status.

The IRS and Treasury Department have not yet responded to requests for comment.

What To Watch For

Lawmakers are asking the Trump administration to fix the error by reversing the automatic revocations and making sure no more organizations have their status automatically revoked before the IRS can get through its “substantial mail backlog.” They are also requesting the IRS to send a report on the issue and why it occurred to lawmakers by Oct. 27, and are calling for the situation to be remedied by the end of the month. Pascrell noted on Twitter Wednesday that the committee had not yet received a response to the letter.

Key Background

Nonprofit organizations’ tax-exempt status allows them to avoid paying income taxes on their revenue and lets donors receive tax deductions for their donations, among other benefits, and  the National Council of Nonprofits notes that losing tax-exempt status can have “disastrous consequences” for an organization. The lawmakers’ letter to the IRS comes after Pascrell and the Oversight subcommittee had also recently called the agency’s practices into question in a September letter to the IRS commissioner, which called Rettig to testify about the agency’s handling of President Donald Trump’s tax returns after the New York Times published details of the president’s taxes. “The takeaway for most Americans [from the Times report]

...is that our Federal tax system is stacked against the average American and being gamed by bad actors like Mr. Trump,” Pascrell wrote. “It is the oversight responsibility of Congress to ensure agencies like the IRS are holding public officials accountable.”

Further Reading

House Calls IRS Commissioner To Testify About Trump’s Tax Returns (Forbes)

IRS Chief Makes More Than $100,000 Per Year Off Trump Property, Documents Show (Forbes)

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