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February 26, 2009

Coalitions Weigh In on Obama's Tax Plan

The top executives at Independent Sector and the Council on Foundations are the latest voices in the chorus of advocates who say President Obama’s tax plan would hamper giving to nonprofit groups and foundations.

“We are opposed to proposals which will significantly depress incentives for charitable giving,” said Steve Gunderson, president and chief executive of the Council on Foundations, an organization that represents grant makers. “In these hard economic times, we need to make sure tax and regulatory policy encourage growth in philanthropy.”

Independent Sector, a coalition of major charities and foundations, said in a statement that the plan would encourage some donors to “cap their gifts.”

“This could be a problem for many struggling nonprofits vital to our communities that are already facing a very difficult fund raising environment,” the organization said.

— Peter Panepento

Thursday February 26, 2009 | Permalink

Comments

1. Let us add our opposition to the Obama Plan for the record.
   It has nothing to do with the size of the individual contribution, because the person who contributes $5.00 today e.g., as a recent graduate of a University, might, 30 years from now, contribute $5,000 a day, and we say this as a “grass roots dollar” organization. It has to do with disagreements over other concepts: (1)the Government should be the only charity, which is what certain people believe, or (2)that individual charities are equal to the government in how they raise and spend their revenues, as others outside the Obama Administration believe.
   Big Government is not the answer to any problem; big Government is the problem, and that is the conceptual problem with this Administration solution.
   It has got absolutely nothing to do philosophically with the dollar amounts of individual contributions involved.

   — Bobby Thompson, Director of Development, US Navy Veterans Association    Mar 1, 10:49 PM    #

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