Overview
The House and Senate passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892) today. The bill includes provisions affecting tax exempt organizations, including:
- A limited exception to the excess business holding rules for private foundations for certain wholly‐owned and independently operated businesses where all net operating income promptly is distributed for use in the foundation’s charitable purposes. A similar provision was included in the original House version of the 2017 tax legislation (Pub. L. No. 115-97) but was not included in the legislation that passed.
- An amendment to the excise tax on private college and university endowments (enacted by the 2017 tax legislation) to only consider “tuition-paying students” for purposes of determining whether thresholds for the number of students and percentage of students in the US have been met. This amendment reverses a last-minute change that had been made to 2017 tax legislation in order to comply with reconciliation requirements in the Senate.
- A provision automatically designating each population census tract in Puerto Rico that is a low-income community as a qualified opportunity zone.
- Other provisions of interest to the charitable sector generally, such as additional emergency disaster aid for the 2017 hurricanes and other natural disasters, extension of the CHIP program for another four years through fiscal year 2027, and funding of community health centers for two years through fiscal year 2019.