Groups Urge Congress to Make Charitable Tax Incentives Permanent

Millions of individuals and families are served by the essential work of America's public charities, which is made possible in part by incentives for charitable giving in our tax code. As Congress returns for a post-election session, we strongly urge you to make permanent the provisions in the America Gives More Act (H.R. 4719) before the end of 2014.

This package of five charitable provisions includes renewing and making permanent three expired tax extender provisions: the IRA charitable rollover, the enhanced deduction for donating land conservation easements, and the enhanced deduction for donating food inventory. Also included is a measure to extend through April 15 the deadline for claiming charitable donations on the previous year's tax filing and a measure to simplify to 1 percent the excise tax rate for private foundations' investment income.

Originally enacted in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 as a way to encourage increased charitable giving, the three charitable giving tax extenders have demonstrated a significant impact on the nonprofit community. The IRA charitable rollover increases the ability of older Americans to make gifts to charities by allowing individuals age 70 1/2 or older to donate up to $100,000 to a qualifying public charity directly from their IRAs without incurring tax on the withdrawal. During the first two years the IRA charitable rollover was available, it prompted more than $140 million in gifts, assisting social service providers, religious organizations, cultural institutions and schools, and numerous other nonprofit organizations.

The enhanced deduction for donations of food allows individuals and organizations to reduce their taxable income by providing qualifying food inventory to certain charitable organizations. According to Feeding America, 3.6 billion pounds of food is distributed by food bank members each year. This legislation would significantly increase food bank access to the 70 billion pounds of nutritious food wasted each year, particularly the 6 billion pounds of produce that does not make it to market.

The enhanced deduction for donations of land conservation easements allows land owners to get a meaningful deduction for permanently retiring development rights to their property to protect and preserve significant natural resources. A survey by the Land Trust Alliance showed that this incentive helped 1,700 land trusts increase the pace of conservation by a third -- to over a million acres a year.

Unfortunately, these charitable tax provisions were allowed to expire on January 1 for the fourth time in recent years. On each of the three previous occasions, an entire package of tax extenders was reinstated retroactively at the end of the following year. While this may be an adequate solution for many provisions in the extenders package, these charitable provisions are different. For each day that goes by without an incentive in place and assured, many of the gifts the incentives were intended to promote will simply not take place. The time to plan and execute the gifts will have already passed by.

For all these reasons, we urge you to support any opportunity prior to the end of 2014 to make permanent the critical giving incentives included in the America Gives More Act, including the IRA charitable rollover, the enhanced deduction for donating land conservation easements, and the enhanced deduction for donating food inventory. We hope to see these provisions made permanent as soon as possible in order to continue sustaining the vital work of charitable organizations in our communities.

Thank you for your consideration,