tax-exempt hospitals

The question of whether non-profit hospitals are doing enough to justify their tax-exempt status is the focus of a new Government Accountability Office study on the manner in which the Internal Revenue Service evaluates hospitals’ tax exemption. According to the study, the IRS struggles with one of the three primary criteria for non-profit hospitals’ tax-exempt status outlined in the Affordable Care Act (PPACA):  whether the community benefit such hospitals provide justifies their tax exemption. The GAO review observed that While PPACA established requirements to better ensure hospitals are serving their communities, the law is unclear about what community benefit activities [...]

The Senate Finance Committee will launch a review of non-profit hospitals and whether they are meeting the formal community benefit standards required to justify their tax-free status. This subject has long been of interest to committee chairman Chuck Grassley, who has returned as committee chair.  He pursued the same question of the hospitals’ non-profit status and community benefit  provide while leading the Senate Finance Committee from 2003 to 2007 and also as a member of the committee, although not its chair, in recent years. In a letter to the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for reviewing [...]