Rep. Titus Introduces Bill to Encourage Charity Transparency
Washington, DC,
April 19, 2016
April 19, 2016
Rep. Titus introduces bill that provides an important tool for officials to track charities who have been convicted of fraud and updates the filing process with IRS. April 19, 2016 Representative Dina Titus of Nevada’s First Congressional District introduced H.R. 4990, the Strengthening Charities Through Transparency Act, legislation to make it easier for Americans and state charity regulators to access information about bad actors in the charity world.
1. Require the Department of Justice to establish a database, accessible to state Attorneys General and easily searchable, of charities and charity management officials who are convicted of fraud, theft, or financial crimes. It would require DOJ to request that states submit this information to the agency for inclusion. 2. Require charities to submit their 990 tax forms (tax return forms filed by tax-exempt organizations and nonexempt charitable trusts) in an electronic format. Currently, charities are given the option to submit electronically. 3. Require the IRS to release a digitized copy of the 990 whenever it would have under current law released a paper copy of the 990. Currently, the IRS only releases non-searchable copies of these forms, which makes it difficult to access and organize the information. |