Early on December 2, 2017, the Senate passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Senate Bill”).  This blog entry describes certain provisions of the Senate Bill that would have the most significant impact on the nonprofit community, including important differences between the Senate Bill and the prior version of the Senate bill and the bill passed by the House of Representatives (the “House Bill”) (both of which we described several weeks ago in “Updates for Tax-Exempt Organizations from the Senate Markup to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”).

The Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities (“ACT”), an IRS advisory panel, made several recommendations on issues relating to unrelated business taxable income (“UBTI”) in its annual report to the IRS (the “Report”).  In recent years, the IRS has focused on UBTI reporting for tax exempt organizations; issues relating to UBTI reporting were addressed in Colleges and Universities Project Final Report, which was released in April last year.  In light of the IRS’ increased focus on UBTI reporting, ACT selected UBTI as a focus for its annual project.

On July 25, 2012, the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means, led by Congressman Charles W. Boustany Jr., MD (R-LA), heard testimony from the IRS and experts in the tax exempt community on the growing complexity of non-profit organizational structures, tax issues concerning unrelated business income and the redesigned Form 990. The hearing was the second in a series examining compliance and transparency issues facing non-profit organizations.