Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
If you are researching a tax question for a church or other faith-based ministry, you really should add the MinistryCPA blog to your list of resources.
Professor Corey Pfaffe has lots of great questions with short, clear answers.
Here are a just a few posts from the last few months you might find helpful: (more…)
Look at the cascading dangers from giving gift cards to your volunteers discussed in a post “Can Gift Cards Jeopardize Your Volunteer Force?” from Katie Thomas, CPA at Nonprofit GPS
Check out the post: Church Official Statements of Annual Giving at MinistryCPA.
Corey Pfaffe has a good reminder about the wording you must put on year-end statements you send to church donors. Without the correct wording, there is a high risk the members of your congregation could lose their deduction in the event of an audit.
It is available on their website here.
I just downloaded the report now, so haven’t had a chance to look at any of it.
Suzanne Perry provides a first look at the document in her article Religious Leaders Tell Congress No New Laws Are Needed to Curb Abuse at Chronicle of Philanthropy.
The IRS has announced the following standard mileage rates for 2013:
- 56.5 cents per mile for business miles driven
- 24 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
- 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
Colette Kamps, CPA of Nonprofit GPS has some background on how long it is taking the IRS to process applications for exempt status.
In her post, How Long Does it Take to Get IRS Approval for Tax Exemption?, she says:
Sometimes a large donor will want to avoid being listed on the schedule B attachment to Form 990. Even though schedule B is not disclosable to the public, some donors worry there is a risk of becoming known. Can you accommodate that request from donors?
Gamman & Grange reminds us that 12-31-12 is the deadline to request reinstatement of exempt status. This is a concern for NPOs that had their exempt status revoked because they went three years without filing a 990-N, which is the on-line ‘postcard’ notice to the IRS.
Here are two questions for administrators of NPO retirement plans from Emma Kong at the Mission: Accountable blog.
Check out her post, Hidden Rules of the 401(d) and 403(b), for the answers to these questions:
The Form 990 from Operation Blessing International for their year ending March 31, 2011 does not include any value for $113,043,709 of deworming medicine that was included on their audited financial statements for that year.
Between the date the audited financial statements were released and when the 990 was filed about seven months later, the ministry decided to remove the amount of contributions for deworming medicine and remove expenses of the same amount.
Operation Blessing has made it really easy to read their audited financial statements and tax return for 2011. You can get either of them with one click at the bottom of this page of their website. Hats off to them for putting both reports in an easy to find place.
Here is the timing:
The IRS has a major push underway to identify people who have hidden cash overseas to avoid paying taxes. That enforcement effort is obviously not a big deal to the nonprofit community.
However, the reporting requirement still applies to ministries that have cash located in their overseas programs.
Here’s the issue: If an individual or organization has ownership or signature authority in an overseas bank account that goes over a mere $10,000 at any point during the year, there is a report that has to be filed by June 30 of the following year.
Even though the severe penalties are intended to encourage people to report all their taxable income, those filing requirements and heavy penalties could create serious problems for an NPO.
If your ministry has cash located overseas, you really need to pay attention to this reporting requirement.
Here is some background that the IRS sent out today in an e-mail update to NPOs:
Verne Hargrave, CPA, of the accounting firm PSK, is continuing his great series on traps that business administrators can fall into. He is offering tips on avoiding the traps.
Previously mentioned this in my post here.
New discussions include:
There is a mandate from HHS that affects every health insurance plan in the country. It will be going into effect for your health plan starting with the next plan year. My previous post provided some initial background on the requirement.
For additional background, printed below is a newsletter from the Gammon and Grange law firm in the Washington, D.C. area. The article can also be found here.
The article is so good that I am posting all of it. I requested and received permission from the Gammon and Grange firm to post the full article. My thanks to them for permission to do so. The article has their contact information at the end.
This week, the Franciscan University of Steubenville became the first university to cease offering health insurance to its students in response to what has become known as the “HHS Mandate.” As many religious employers are aware, on January 20, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) finalized regulations under the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (“ACA Regs”). These ACA Regs require almost all employers with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance plans that will fully cover reproductive “preventive health services.” Covered services include sterilization procedures and the contraceptive drugs known as Plan B (the “morning after” pill) and ulipristal or ella (the “week after” pill), which are considered to be abortifacients or abortion-inducing medicines.
I don’t do politics on my blogs. I’m not making an exception now or anytime in the future.
It is not political to speak up when official government policy will require you or your organization to compromise your faith-formed, scripture-driven, core religious beliefs.
That is the place many people are at with the requirement from HHS to include contraceptives, including abortifacients, in all healthcare plans.
Such a requirement is completely contrary to the beliefs of people from the Roman Catholic tradition, as we saw in the news yesterday. It also violates the core beliefs of many other people and organizations in the religious nonprofit community. This isn’t a concern for everyone, but it will be a major issue for many traditions.
I don’t follow healthcare issues closely, but I think it is time to provide some background for readers of my blog.
I’ve not been paying much attention over the years to the occassional conflict around Trinity Broadcasting Network. An article in The New York Times this week reports there is a major round of turmoil that is now visible.
Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry, by Erik Eckholm, reports on accusations of extravagant spending by Mr. and Mrs. Crouch leveled by one of their granddaughters and accusations of theft by the granddaughter leveled by TBN.