Tax Incentives for Charity Proposed

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Representative Mel Blont (R-MO) announced introduction of the CARE (Charity, Recovery and Empowerment) Act of 2005. As in previous efforts, the bill allows nonitemizers to deduct some contributions, allows tax-free contributions from IRAs and similar retirement accounts, increases corporate charitable ceiling to 20% and provided for matching savings accounts to encourage asset building among low-income workers. Santorum indicates that there is bipartisan support (such as Joe Lieberman) for the bill and has taken some controversial faith-based charities provisions out of this iteration. Santorum also mentioned that some not-for-profit reforms may be attached, but he and Senator Grassley have been in talks about finding a middle ground, thus reforms may be less extensitive than previously proposed.

It should be fairly clear from previous posts that I am a big fan of the charitable/nonprofit sector as a means of improving social concerns such as poverty. Therefore, although I would like to know more details, CARE sounds like an interesting and promising legislation.