September 15, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Nonprofit groups should join hands with an unusual ally—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to fight a “burdensome and costly” provision in the new health-care law, argues lawyer Jack Siegel in his Charity Governance blog. The provision has nothing to do with health care but was inserted as a way to raise money to pay for the new law.
It would require employers, including charities, to file Internal Revenue Service 1099 tax forms to report all purchases from any vendor that sold them at least $600 in goods during the year. It is designed to ensure that those vendors are reporting all of their taxable income.
“It’s not the filing that is so problematic,” writes Mr. Siegel. “The significant costs will be associated with collecting information.”
The Chamber of Commerce is trying to get the measure repealed.
While that organization “may disgust many nonprofit leaders, health care reform has created some strange bedfellows,” Mr. Siegel writes.
The Senate has so far not shown much interest in changing the law. It rejected a measure on Tuesday to repeal the vendor provision and failed to get the 60 votes needed to move forward another proposal to modify it.
