Tax Exempt Status

The Internal Revenue Service wants to revoke the PTL's tax-exempt status for three years because a "substantial portion" of its earnings benefited Jim Bakker, his relatives and other PTL officers, the Charlotte Observer reported. The IRS said in a confidential 1985 report that Bakker was paid nearly $1 million more than the agency deemed reasonable from 1981 to 1983, the Observer reported in its editions today.

This New York City suburb has seen its share of famous residents ? Tony Bennett, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Jessica Parker among them. But it is the one who has never been seen who commands the most attention: Moammar Kadafi, Libyan leader and lord of a multimillion-dollar mansion that flies Libya's flag and sits next door to one very peeved Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Rarely has the stone-walled structure, with expansive grounds, pond and swimming pool, been the placid retreat the Libyan government envisioned when it paid $1 million for it in 1982, six years before Libyan agents blew up Pan Am Flight 103. The estate, called Thunder Rock, has been a flash point for years for local protests, most recently in 2009 when Kadafi lost a battle to erect his traveling Bedouin tent on the lawn during a U.S. visit.

The Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of the PTL television ministry Friday and said contributions to the financially troubled organization are no longer tax deductible. PTL officials, who are trying to reorganize the ministry in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Columbia, have said the tax-exempt status is essential to PTL's survival because it depends on tax-deductible contributions to operate. PTL has a theme park and a cable television network based in Ft. Mill.

Backers of an initiative to ban same-sex marriage began airing their first commercial Monday, warning that a loss could lead to gay marriage being "taught in public schools" and that churches could lose their tax-exempt status. Proposition 8's promoters said their initial ad buy was $10 million. They hope to raise $3.6 million more by the Nov. 4 election. Foes are spending roughly similar sums.

Football coach George Allen's nonprofit National Fitness Foundation faces losing its tax-exempt status because it is long overdue in filing required state financial reports, documents show. A "final-warning" letter dated Dec. 14 from the office of State Atty. Gen. John K.

A Republican-appointed tax group--the one pushing a single-rate system with few deductions--wants the IRS to give it tax-exempt status so its contributors can write off their donations. The foundation set up to finance the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform has asked the Internal Revenue Service to classify it as a Section 501(c)(3) organization. That would allow contributors to deduct donations to it from their income the same way people who who donate to charities can.

The Internal Revenue Service has made a ruling that could cost the Los Angeles Unified School District millions of dollars a year by disallowing the tax-exempt status of bonds sold to build the troubled Belmont Learning Complex. If upheld, the preliminary ruling would probably cause investors to call in more than $80 million in low-interest loans rather than pay taxes on the interest income. "We'll have to figure out how to finance this money," said Harold J.

Concluding that L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology of California, had "unfettered control" over millions of dollars in church assets, a federal appeals court Tuesday upheld the revocation of the church's tax-exempt status. In a ruling that rejected nearly every argument the church had raised, the U.S.

The Internal Revenue Service has approved tax-exempt status for the proposed California Earthquake Authority, a vital step toward a plan to provide homeowners with at least limited quake insurance. Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, who has assembled commitments from many insurance companies to participate in the state-run agency, and $1.7 billion to support it, will formally announce the IRS approval today, sources said.

PTL officials vowed to fight an Internal Revenue Service ruling stripping the bankrupt television ministry of its tax-exempt status and blamed big salaries paid to Jim and Tammy Bakker for PTL's troubles. David Clark, PTL's court-appointed trustee, said PTL would file an appeal this week with the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington and that appeal would automatically allow contributions to PTL to continue to be tax deductible.

A Southern Baptist pastor investigated by the IRS for his endorsement of GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Sunday he was cleared of wrongdoing. Wiley S. Drake said he was notified Thursday that he did not violate his church's tax-exempt status when he used church letterhead and a church-affiliated radio show to support the former Arkansas governor. "I had personally endorsed him. The fact that I used church letterhead to announce it didn't mean I was acting on behalf of the church," Drake said.

Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson has been cleared of accusations that he endangered his organization's nonprofit status by endorsing Republican candidates in 2004, an Internal Revenue Service audit found. The IRS said Dobson, an influential child psychologist who backed President Bush's reelection bid, was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the conservative Christian ministry when endorsing politicians.

Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The request was in response to the liberal group's urging the IRS on Tuesday to investigate Drake's church's nonprofit status because Drake endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president on church letterhead and during a church-affiliated Internet radio show.

Anyone trying to find high-ranking state officials this week might check posh overseas tourist spots -- where many are traveling for free. About 16 Schwarzenegger administration officials, regulators and state lawmakers are spending spring break on fact-finding missions and conferences in Europe and Japan. The excursions were paid for by tax-exempt groups whose donors include corporations with business before the state, according to itineraries and guest rosters compiled by trip sponsors.

What do you think would have happened if Reggie Bush had pulled his bush league actions against, say, oh, the 1985 Chicago Bears or the Minnesota Vikings when they had the Purple People Eaters defense? I can tell you what would have happened. The next time Reggie Bush took the ball, he would have been taken off the field on a stretcher. GLENN M. LANGDON Garden Grove New definitions for "bush league" and "cheater" are the same: Reggie Bush. Bush league refers to his play in the Saints' loss to the Bears and cheater to his and his parents' need to violate NCAA rules on payments to athletes.

So what exactly did a priest say to get a Pasadena church in trouble with the IRS? The federal agency has launched an investigation into the activities of All Saints Episcopal Church, asking whether a sermon by a former rector before the 2004 presidential campaign constituted campaigning. As tax-exempt organizations, churches are barred from campaigning for candidates. The sermon, delivered Oct. 31, 2004, by the Rev. George F.

A federal appeals judge has temporarily halted attempts by the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of PTL, the evangelical empire founded by Jim Bakker. In an order filed this week in Richmond, Va., U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William Wilkins stayed a lower court ruling revoking PTL's tax exemption. Wilkins set a March 31 hearing in Greenville, S.C.

Several well-known conservative organizations may have put their tax-exempt status at risk as a result of helping disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients, according to a new report from congressional Democrats. The report by the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee concludes that the organizations "appear to have perpetrated a fraud on other taxpayers" by engaging in "what amounted to profit seeking and private benefit behavior inconsistent with their tax-exempt status."

U.S. Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) is questioning whether the NCAA, with its $521.1-million annual budget and lucrative television rights package, deserves its tax-exempt status. In a pointed, eight-page letter sent Monday to NCAA President Myles Brand, Thomas suggested that big-time athletic programs might be at odds with the purpose of higher education and might not qualify for tax-exempt status.