Yesterday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA) and Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John Lewis (D-GA) released the following statement, calling for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide refund guidance to tax-exempt organizations that paid a 21 percent unrelated business income tax (UBIT) on parking and transportation benefits provided to employees. In December, Congress retroactively repealed the portion of the 2017 tax law that unfairly inflicted the UBIT on tax-exempt organizations.
“Charities and houses of worship wasted precious time, money, and energy contending with a damaging tax that the 2017 Republican law imposed on them," they wrote in the letter. "It is unconscionable that the GOP gave big corporations and the wealthiest Americans more than $2 trillion of tax cuts, but forced soup kitchens to pay taxes on their employees’ parking benefits. That policy undermined any semblance of a fair or just tax code. Congress did our part to right this wrong – now it is time for the IRS to provide tax-exempt organizations with the guidance they need to claim and receive the refunds they are due.”
Neal and Lewis also sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig regarding the requested guidance.
The UBIT Coalition, comprised of several organizations, including OSAE and ASAE, has been waging war on this particular guidance, which was part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, since it was approved and signed into law by President Donald Trump.