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News and Avoiding Scams

Caritas Law Group: Small is Beautiful

Yes, the rumors are true. CharityLawyer has formed her own law firm. My theme for 2010 is Small is Beautiful (which happens to be the title of the next book review). I started my career at a big four accounting firm with thousands of tax professionals, moved down the food chain to a national law firm of only 400 lawyers, and then to a regional law firm with a mere 200 lawyers. So, to continue the trend, I have started my own boutique law firm specializing in representing nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations. The firm is located in Phoenix, Arizona but will represent clients with respect to exempt organizations matters nationwide.

January 13, 2010 No Comments

News and Avoiding Scams

Estate Tax Repeal Alert

It appears that Congress will adjourn this year without reaching an agreement on transfer tax legislation. This means that a one-year repeal of estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes is scheduled to begin on January 1. The one-year repeal results from provisions in the 2001 tax act that reduced estate and GST taxes from 2001 through 2009, culminating in complete repeal in 2010. The provisions in the 2001 act are scheduled to “sunset” in 2011, meaning that estate and GST tax rates and exemptions will return to pre-2001 levels on January 1, 2011.

December 25, 2009 No Comments

IRS

IRS Tips for Year-End Donations

Individuals and businesses making contributions to charity should keep in mind several important tax law provisions that have taken effect in recent years. Some of these changes include the following:

December 23, 2009 No Comments

Governance

IRS Releases Governance Check Sheet

The Internal Revenue Service is at it again. The IRS recently released a Governance Check Sheet that its examination agents will use when examining charitable organizations (other than private foundations), along with a Guide Sheet providing instructions on how to use the Check Sheet. According to the IRS’s webpage for exempt organization governance issues, the Check Sheet “will be used by IRS’ Exempt Organizations Examination agents to capture data about governance practices and the related internal controls of organizations being examined. The data will be included in a long-term study to gain a better understanding of the intersection between governance practices and tax compliance.” These materials are in addition to the governance training materials previously released by the IRS.

December 17, 2009 No Comments

Governance

Liability of Nonprofit Directors and Officers

In the last decade or so, directors and officers have faced an increased exposure to personal liability. While the bulk of legal actions have been against directors and officers of for profit corporations, judgments against and settlements by directors and officers of nonprofit corporations are increasing.

December 13, 2009 No Comments

How to Start a Charter School in Arizona

Ellis Carter and Deanna Rader will be co-presenting a webinar on December 15th at 4:00 pm as part of the Arizona Charter School Association’s Charter Starter program. One of the first sessions that the program will offer is a webinar on the legal aspects of starting an Arizona charter school.

December 2, 2009 No Comments

Starting a nonprofit

Caveat Emptor – Legal Document Preparers

In my practice representing nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations, there are often themes that emerge. Over the last few weeks I have had a spate of calls from would be nonprofits that paid either a nonprofit start-up consultant or a document preparation company to form their nonprofit and handle their IRS filings. In each case, the work product that made it to my office required substantially more work to fix than it would have taken to do properly the first time around. You get what you pay for, and sometimes, you pay dearly for what you get. Before hiring someone to help you with the legal and tax aspects of starting a nonprofit, make sure they are licensed to provide the type of assistance they are offering, have specific experience representing nonprofits, and are in fact representing you rather than helping you to commit malpractice on yourself.

November 25, 2009 No Comments

Starting a nonprofit

Nonprofit Law Jargon Buster – Private Inurement v. Private Benefit

The private inurement rule and private benefit rules exist to ensure that charitable assets are preserved for the benefit of the public and not diverted to private use. This is a fundamental concept that distinguishes tax-exempt organizations from for-profits.

The rules originate in the language of Code Section 501(c)(3). Code Section 501(c)(3) contains the specific requirement that:

[N]o part of the net earnings of [the exempt organization] inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual . . . .

In addition, under the regulations, an organization is not treated as organized and operated for exclusively exempt purposes unless it serves a public rather than a private interest, Based on this provision, tax exempt status is not available to any organization if its net earnings inure to the benefit of private individuals in whole or in part.

In practice, the law distinguishes between different degrees of inurement depending upon who is being benefitted. The two types of inurement are referred to as private inurement and public benefit.

November 18, 2009 No Comments

Collaboration Case Study – Failed Merger

Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. In this case, the board and staff of both nonprofits did a great job of putting their mission and beneficiaries first, only to be ambushed by their lack of stakeholder communication and buy-in.

November 14, 2009 No Comments

Collaboration Case Study Acquisition Converted to Management Agreement

Often, in an effort to save money, clients come to their attorneys with a plan and simply ask them to “draft X.” Frequently, X isn’t the most appropriate solution. This case was one of those. The deal started out as an acquisition with the lawyer (me!) being kept at arm’s length when in fact more involvment early on would have quickly identified that this program was not a candidate for an acquisition, but rather a simple management arrangement.