The Florida Supreme Court, accepting a question certified by the state Court of Appeal, has held that an agreement by a charitable organization to make payments in lieu of taxes (“PILOTs”) to a local municipality is not unconstitutional or unenforceable. The Court of Appeal had ruled otherwise (See Nonprofit Issues, April 2015.) and the Supreme Court has reversed.
The federal District Court in the District of Columbia has ruled that a group of “individuals sharing mutual concerns” about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have no standing to sue the Treasury Department to force it to investigate about 200 501(c)(3) organizations and revoke their exemptions where appropriate. The District Court followed a long line of cases denying standing where the activity complained of has only a tenuous relationship to the injury complained about and where the remedy requested would not redress the injury.
It took only three meetings of the Bakersfield (CA) Green Thumb Garden Club for its members to decide that the all-volunteer club was no longer the same friendly and welcoming place it had been before the installation of the new president. They felt offended, demoralized and put off by his attitude and dictatorial manner. At a members’ meeting “a vast majority of the members present” voted to remove the current directors and reactivate the previous board until a new nominating committee could be installed to propose new officers and directors. The newly elected president w
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the imposition of federal income tax on a couple who set up their own church and took vows of poverty but totally controlled the church and used its income for their personal living expenses.
Elizabeth and Fredric Gardner formed the Bethel Aram Ministries in 1993 as an “unincorporated ecclesiastical church ministry” but never filed an application for recognition as a church. In 1999, they signed vows of poverty and assigned all of their assets, including their home, to the organization.
The IRS has published online data on more than 105,000 organizations that have been recognized as Section 501(c)(3) charities after submitting their information on the streamlined Form 1023-EZ. (IR-2017-41, 2/22/17)
The nonprofit Dodge County Antique Power Club is not liable for damages to an inmate injured by another inmate during a work project on the club property. The inmate was injured when another inmate hit her in the head with a plastic barrel while they were moving the barrels from a trailer to a shed. The injured inmate claimed that the club had not properly trained them for the tasks.
A church in San Francisco has lost a court battle to reclaim control over two housing subsidiaries, one of which is more than a half century old, that it thought it controlled but didn’t. An appellate court in California has affirmed a trial court decision holding that the church’s claim is barred by the statute of limitations but even if it weren’t, the governing documents of the “subsidiaries” don’t give the church any role in governance.
