On the recordApril 15, 2015
I have a riddle for you: What is it that brings together the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Prosperity, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Tea Party Patriots all under one tent? Mr. Speaker, it is the Fair Treatment for All Gifts Act, H.R. 1104. Here is the point. This is why all these groups from a wide range of political perspectives have all come together. They have come together because the IRS has started sniffing around about the possibility of doing something that every one of those groups really finds jarring, and that is assessing a tax liability on gifts to nonprofit organizations. Now, you would have thought that this would be pretty settled doctrine, that gifts to nonprofit organizations, those types of contributions, are not taxable events. Yet the Internal Revenue Service wrote a letter. It is this type of letter. It is the kind of letter that I described in an earlier bill. You get it, and it is very unsettling, Mr. Speaker. They just wrote some donor, and they said, Your gift tax return was assigned to me for examination. The IRS has received information that you donated cash to some organization, and it begins to lay out a theory as to why this should be a taxable event. Mr. Speaker, this should not be a taxable event. Mr. Speaker, this should not be ambiguous. And, Mr.…
