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House passes bill allowing Trump admin to declare nonprofits supporters of terrorism
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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If this becomes law the charitable-giving industry is going to be slammed. Right now there are lots of ways that you, a donor, can give to your favorite causes via an intermediary, taking a current tax deduction for doing so but (possibly) having the intermediary pay out in the future (an endowment), possibly forever (if endowment growth exceeds charitable outflows). If all of a sudden a large chunk of the nonprofit space are deemed anti-Trump "terrorists" then these intermediaries (public and private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs) for example) will suddenly have far fewer recipients to write checks to, and may have no recipients at all in the case where funds are directed to just a few recipients or areas-of-interest by the terms of the donation. Oh sure, the money will be disposed of one way or another, but it might very well not be disposed of in the way the donor intended at the time of the donation, and might well end up being disposed of in a way the donor would never have agreed to. Tough luck donor, you took the tax write-off, you can't get the donation $ back and you can't have it disbursed to non-charities either.
These intermediaries, the foundations and charitable-fund managers, are themselves charities. Their job is to disburse donor funds to a myriad of charities more or less according to the wishes of their donors. So what happens when, say, Fidelity Charitable is deemed a "terrorist" org for sending donor money to the ACLU? If it's stripped of its nonprofit status, it can no longer be a DAF manager, so what then? What happens to the donors and all the assets under management? I suppose there will need to be a follow-on bill that will compel the fund managers under such circumstances to cut checks to Trump and Trump-affiliated orgs (nonprofit or not). I read recently that the sum of DAF assets under management alone is around $250B (2023 numbers I think) so if a substantial amount of those funds are deemed "terrorist" funds, then it'll be mighty tempting for "somebody", somebody bad at business yet well-known for criminality to see about doing some confiscation.
Also, right now, if one is, say, a DAF donor, many of the managers (most?) allow you to make anonymous donations out of your account. But if you are (or were) having checks sent to newly disfavored (i.e. not regime-aligned) orgs, will the manager have to turn your name over to the government? After all, you'd then be a "terrorist" yourself wouldn't you?
I could really see this decimating the charitable-giving industry. Charitable foundations and fund managers have got to be losing sleep over what these laws could entail. As a donor, unless I was already MAGA-aligned and really wanted that tax deduction, why would I bother with all this uncertainty and risk?