Tax, Legal & Compliance

A dual national British-Australian man has been arrested and detained in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for sharing on Facebook a link to a fundraising campaign benefiting refugees in Afghanistan. Scott Richards, who lives in the United Arab Emirates city with his family but is a citizen of both Australia and the U.K., was charged with…

Jimmy Feigen, who has been accused by Brazilian authorities of fabricating a robbery claim along with Ryan Lochte and two other U.S. swimming teammates, will pay about $10,800 to an unnamed Brazilian charity and then leave the country, his attorney told the Associated Press early Friday. According to attorney Breno Melaragno, Brazilian law allows people…

More than two decades after issuing rules and regulations for nonprofits on how to present and share their financials, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) hopes to simplify things for these organizations, as well as their donors, by issuing new guidelines. After years of study and outreach, the FASB released new guidelines this week that…

The IRS has slashed the application fee small charitable organizations are required to pay when applying for tax-exempt status. According to Revenue Procedure 2016-32, the IRS reduced the user fee from $400 to $275 for Form 1023-EZ, Streamlined Application for Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The new fee went into…

Colorado’s attorney general and secretary of state are asking residents to do more to check out charities before they decide to give. "I encourage the many generous people in our state who make charitable contributions to take proper precautions before donating their hard-earned money," Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said in a news release. "Unfortunately,…

Lynn Hlatky has spent her career as a scientist studying the development of cancer, hoping in some way to improve understanding of an insidious disease. She took a path common in her field: won funding, established a lab, assembled a team of colleagues and got to work. But now, a decade of Hlatky’s work suddenly…

In 2005, Vanderbilt conceded defeat in its legal battle to remove the word "Confederate" from one of its residency halls, which was built as Confederate Memorial Hall, but which the university prefers to call just Memorial Hall. The university had announced plans to remove the word in 2002, but the Tennessee chapter of the United…

Crowdfunding has changed the face of disaster/emergency fundraising. It offers a way for people worldwide to offer monetary assistance to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is hosted on platforms that the nonprofit does not have to own or run, thus taking away a lot of logistical details that can bog down an emergency response. But crowdfunding brings with it a new set of challenges to be addressed...

The nonprofit TD Beach to Beacon 10K has become wildly popular as Maine’s largest road race. Registration for Saturday’s event, which drew more than 6,300 runners, filled in less than four minutes. But while Beach to Beacon’s revenues have more than tripled over the past 15 years, its charitable contributions have declined as a percentage,…

Severance pay should be considered whenever an employee is laid off, is terminated with or without cause, or resigns from employment. Termination can result from a variety of circumstances, some of which may involve contentious people or situations, and difficult issues. Thus, severance pay may be a good risk-management tool for avoiding potential 
litigation, adverse publicity and other claims against a nonprofit employer...