Senate Finance Committee Hearing To Focus On Charitable Giving Incentives

UPDATE: Please read our article about the hearing on our website.

Incentives for charitable giving will take center stage on Tuesday as the Senate Finance Committee continues hearings related to tax reform.

The hearing, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., will feature four speakers scheduled to testify: United Way Worldwide President and CEO Brian Gallagher; Eugene Steuerle of The Urban Institute; Elder Dallin Oaks of The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Frank Sammartino, assistant director for tax analysis at the Congressional Budget Office, and Roger Colinvaux, associate professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.

Senate Democrats last week replaced in the American Jobs Act (S. 1549) a cap on charitable deductions for the nation’s highest earners with a 5.6-percent surtax on millionaires. Coalitions of nonprofits have been lobbying lawmakers to preserve the cap on charitable deductions after it was introduced a fourth time by President Barack Obama as away to pay for his jobs bill.

Under the original proposal, put forward a fourth time by the Obama administration, tax deductions on charitable contributions – in addition to other deductions – would have been capped at 28 percent for taxpayers in the highest tax brackets, earning more than $250,000 annually. Currently, those deductions can be as high as 35 percent.