The Internal Revenue Service has recently released a “Technical Guide” to help provide guidance on the limits of charitable activity.  The new Guide is one of two “comprehensive, issue-specific documents” published to update and combine Audit Technique Guides with other technical content and to replace existing Audit Technique Guides.

The new Guides are:

After nearly five years of dissent and litigation, the deposed director of a singles club in California has won the right to continue litigation over his status, where he is ultimately most likely to lose again.

A tenant who opposes the imposition of real estate on property it leased from a church cannot dispute the tax when it failed to file an appeal from the imposition within the time allotted by statute, an appellate court in Massachusetts has ruled.  It has also ruled that the tenant could not sue the city for allegedly wrong information given by the City’s tax assessor when the tenant originally sought to resolve the situation.

The Court of Appeals of Minnesota has affirmed a trial court decision removing one of the trustees of the Otto Bremer Trust, a $2 billion private foundation in St. Paul, for “serious breach of trust” under state law.  The Attorney General had petitioned for the removal of all three of the Foundation’s trustees, but the trial court granted the petition only as to one of the group.  The removed trustee appealed and the Court of Appeals has affirmed.

The Supreme Court of Washington has dismissed a group of claims brought by the state for violation of state consumer protection law by a for-profit thrift store operator that advertised its payments to “charity partners” for contributions to the thrift store operation.  The Court has refused to apply the standard for liability usually applicable to “commercial” speech to determine whether a fraud had occurred and found that the claims do not survive the “strict scrutiny” applied to charitable solicitation.

A Pennsylvania appellate court has denied charitable real estate tax exemption for four hospitals in a reginal nonprofit hospital system on the ground that they did not qualify under the state’s definition of “charitable.”  It affirmed three decisions from one county and reversed a decision from another.

The state Commonwealth Court has found that four hospitals in the Tower Health system in suburban Philadelphia did not operate free from private profit motive and did not provide a sufficient amount of below cost care to its patients.