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 Update from the Senate: As you may recall, Senator Craig Thomas passed away in early June, leaving an open seat on the Senate Finance Committee, the committee with jurisdiction over the tax-exempt sector. On July 10th, ending weeks of speculation, Senate Republican leadership announced that Senator John Ensign (R-NV) was named to the Senate Finance Committee, skipping over the more senior Senators Michael Enzi (R-WY) and George Voinovich (R-OH) who had also been vying for the spot. To view a copy of Senator Ensign’s bio, click here. His record on tax issues suggests he will be a solid Republican member of the committee.
 Update from the House of Representatives: The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee has announced that it will hold a hearing on tax-exempt charitable organizations on July 24th. This hearing is intended to provide the members of the subcommittee with a general overview of issues pertaining to the tax-exempt sector, with a focus on charities and foundations. Furthermore, we understand that, depending on the response to the Ways and Means Committee’s response for comments on the Pension Protection Act, there may be a follow-up hearing in the fall on the impact of the PPA on the charitable sector. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Government Accountability Office (GAO), Council on Foundations (COF) and the Independent Sector will testify at the hearing. We understand that COF was asked to educate the committee on foundations and IS was asked to educate the committee on charities. We will keep you updated as more details of the hearing become available.
 Deadline Extended to Submit Comments to the Pension Protection Act of 2006: As we reported in a previous update, the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee is seeking comments on the tax-exempt portions of the Pension Protection Act (PPA). The deadline for submissions, which was originally July 31st, has been extended to August 7th.
If your organization is affected by any of the provisions in the PPA, we encourage you to submit comments. For a summary of the tax exempt portions of the PPA, please email us at chris@acreform.com. To submit comments, click here and please copy chris@acreform.com to ensure that your comments are received.
 Hedge Fund/UBIT Update: For background on this issue, please see the June 14th, 2007 Legislative Update. Several committee hearings were held this week in the House and Senate on hedge fund and private equity issues; however, these hearings did not focus on the UBIT issue. We expect the Hedge Fund/UBIT issue to be raised again in the context of an education tax bill (given that university endowments use of hedge funds first prompted the scrutiny).
The Council on Foundations has submitted a statement on the UBIT issue. Click here to view the statement from the Council on Foundations.
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