Healthcare Financial News

The IRS and the Treasury Department on Sept. 8 issued new regulations that will streamline the approval process for organizations seeking tax-exempt status as publicly supported charities.

The new regulations do away with the so-called “advance rulings” that granted public charity status for an initial five-year period but required exempt organizations to demonstrate, after the initial period, that they in fact received a substantial part of their support from public sources to receive a final determination letter. The IRS was able to eliminate the advance rulings process because of the recent redesign of Form 990, the tax return filed by organizations exempt from federal income tax.

Organizations that have already received an advance ruling under the old regime, but are still in their first five years of existence, can use their advance ruling letter as their final determination letter. In addition to the streamlined approval process, the new regulations include other modifications necessary to implement the redesigned Form 990. Read the press release.

The trend in employment-based health insurance coverage for the U.S. nonelderly population (under age 65) has been heading downhill in recent years but has remained roughly constant since 1994, according to a study released Sept. 9 by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

In 2007, 62.2 percent of the nonelderly population had employment-based health benefits, unchanged from 2006, says the study, published in the September 2008 EBRI Issue Brief. Overall, the percentage of the nonelderly population with health insurance coverage increased slightly to 82.8 percent in 2007.

In the past half-dozen years, the percentage of individuals with employment-based health benefits decreased from 68.4 percent in 2000 to 62.2 percent in 2006--although compared with 1994, the percentage of individuals with employment-based health benefits is largely unchanged, the study says. Read the executive summary.