Category: Tax Policy

Taxes

Helping Your Donors Navigate Tax Season

By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Tax season is a great time to communicate with your donors about how they can make smart decisions about their giving. In fact, if you have donors who are required to make annual distributions from their individual retirement accounts, there is still time for them to receive a benefit on their 2021 tax returns. According to IRS rules, anyone who has an IRA must take a required minimum annual distribution (RMD) from their accounts once they turn 72. But that time is growing short. Eligible donors have until Tax Day (April 18) to give money

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Congress

Will Congress Act to Reform Philanthropy?

By Jan Masaoka  While this may surprise those who follow philanthropy’s every move, Congress only rarely passes laws that directly regulate philanthropy. The last truly foundational law regarding philanthropy was passed in 1969. That was the law that mandated a 5% minimum payout from private foundations, among other provisions (such as prohibitions against self-dealing). Of course, a lot has changed in philanthropy since 1969! Consider, for example, the donor-advised fund, or DAF. The first DAF may date back to 1931, but the significance of DAFs has increased markedly in the past half century, with the number of assets held in

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Donor Advised Funds: Why Community Foundations Should Endorse the ACE Act

By Alan Cantor Watch a recent in-depth LAPA webinar on the subject of Donor-Advised Funds Some people simply can’t take “yes” for an answer. How else can one explain how some community foundation leaders rejected the thoughtful set of reforms contained in the Accelerating Charitable Efforts (ACE) Act — a series of measures to reform Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) that would actually serve community foundations well? For years, the lobbying arm of community foundations — the Community Foundations Public Awareness Initiative — has embraced a business model in which it fights any form of reforms around DAFs, no matter how mild.

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Jar of coins with a plant growing. LAPA Fundraising

Biden’s Tax Policy: What’s Ahead for Nonprofits?

By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA The Biden administration has been making the case that to avoid paying the administration’s proposed additional taxes on high earners — an increase from 37% to 39.6% — wealthy Americans will give more to nonprofits. You can hear a detailed discussion about this on our recent webinar. Indeed, President Biden’s  plan to raise taxes  on high earners and the wealthy is likely to entice more rich Americans to give property or other assets to charities before they die to avoid paying large tax bills. For example, taxpayers making more than $400,000 per year would be taxed

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