Council Comments on Treasury/IRS Priorities

The Council on Foundations wrote to the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) this week to urge them to prioritize several regulations and guidance documents that impact our members. Each year, the Priority Guidance Plan identifies and prioritizes those tax issues that the agencies should address through regulations or revenue rulings, procedures, notices, and guidance throughout the upcoming year. The Council’s public policy and legal team has a strong working relationship with IRS decision-makers, and we seize every opportunity to communicate the priorities of our members and the philanthropic field to regulators. Our comments, which are separated into domestic regulatory priorities and international grantmaking priorities, ask the agencies to include the follow items in their Priority Guidance Plan for 2014-2015:

• Guidance on the statutory provisions related to donor advised funds, which became law in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA);
• Guidance on the standards IRS officials employ to recognize nonprofit media organizations as exempt under Section 501(c)(3);
• Clarification on the treatment of Mission-Related Investments;
• Guidance related to talent retention programs, specifically foundations providing student loan forgiveness;
• Clarification of economic development as charitable activity;
• An update to Revenue Procedure 92-94, which governs equivalency determinations for charities overseas;
• Guidance on grants to Mexican charities in light of a new U.S.-Mexico Treaty; and
• A modification of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) that will simplify the cross-border grantmaking efforts of many of our members.