“The U.S. House of Representatives rejected an $11 billion bill that would have provided tax incentives for charitable donations of food, money from retirement accounts and land-development rights,” reports Richard Rubin on Thursday’s (12/11) Bloomberg.com. “The House’s 275-149 vote fell short of the two-thirds margin needed to pass it under an expedited procedure. That’s the same threshold that would have been needed to overcome a threatened veto from President Barack Obama.… The vote probably ends any chance of the bill’s success this year, a defeat for the charities that had rallied for it in the final days of the congressional session.… The three charitable-contribution breaks are among a larger group of tax breaks that are renewed by Congress every year or two, and expired most recently at the end of 2013.… Charitable groups have been pressing the administration and Congress to back the breaks, contending that renewing them periodically doesn’t give taxpayers sufficient time to plan their donations. The White House threatened a veto because the bill [to make the provisions permanent] didn’t contain budgetary offsets and would set a precedent for extensions of other temporary policies. A separate bill, H.R. 5771, would restore all the tax incentives for 2014 only. The House has passed that measure, which is awaiting a Senate vote.”
Posted December 12, 2014
