The City of Allentown, PA, may not impose a “business privilege tax” on the income of a charitable corporation providing services to three operating charitable subsidiaries, an appellate court has ruled.  The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has affirmed a trial court decision denying the City’s effort to collect more than $788,000 in taxes for the tax years 2012 through 2016.  (See Nonprofit Issues^®, Vol. XXIX, No. 5)

Gifts of corporate stock to charities totaled more than $38.6 billion and comprised more than half of all noncash charitable gifts reported on individuals’ tax returns for 2018, the IRS has reported.   

In a long-anticipated ruling, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund has been found not liable to the donors to a donor advised fund who claimed that they were damaged significantly when Fidelity sold all 1.9 million donated shares of a thinly-traded company in the last 2.5 hours of trading of the last day of trading in December 2017.  A magistrate judge in a Federal District Court in California has dismissed all of the donors’ claims.

The Bankruptcy Code provides that all pending or potential claims against the debtor are automatically stayed and may not be pursued when the debtor formally files for bankruptcy protection.  But the law also provides that cases are not stayed against non-debtors, including the individual officers of a bankrupt organization.