Sector Submits Tax Reform Comments to Senate Finance

On Tax Day, the Council submitted comments to the Senate Finance Committee’s Business and Individual tax reform working groups. We offer our tax reform priorities in response to the Senate Finance Committee request to submit written comments to its tax reform working groups. We expect the Committee will issue a summary report of submissions in the coming months.

The Council recommended that the Business Working Group preserve current law on donor-advised funds, simplify the private foundation excise tax, and maintain Type II and III supporting organizations. We also noted our concern with proposals that would expand the scope of the unrelated business income tax, increase penalties imposed on private foundations for self-dealing transactions, eliminate the presumption of reasonableness when foundations are involved in excess business transactions, and require mandatory electronic filing of IRS Form 990.

Our comments to the Individual Working Group urged Senators to maintain the full value of the charitable deduction, make permanent and enhance the IRA charitable rollover, make permanent the enhanced deductions for conservation easements and food inventory donations, and to preserve current law regulating donor-advised funds.

We also shared both the Individual and Business comments with both working groups, to ensure that all of our priorities were heard by the full Senate Finance Committee.

If your organization submitted comments and is willing to share them with the Council, we would like to highlight excerpts in future editions of Washington Snapshot.