Tax Credit for Small Nonprofits Included in Health Care Reform

On September 23, 2009, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that Senator Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee chair, amended his health-care bill to provide a tax credit for small charities that provide insurance to their employees.   As proposed health-care reforms unfolded on Capitol Hill, nonprofits decried the absence of specific legislative components that address nonprofit needs to provide affordable health insurance.  Nonprofits employ almost 10% of the workforce, private and public, in the United States.  To ignore the special needs of nonprofits would be to ignore a large segment of Americans in need of insurance.  Below is an excerpt of the story:

Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has agreed to amend his health-care bill to provide a tax credit to help small charities provide health insurance to their employees.

His original language, unveiled last week, would have allowed the credit only for small businesses that pay income taxes, excluding most nonprofit organizations. Several senators proposed amending the text to make nonprofit groups eligible for the credit.

. . . 

The credit would be available to employers with no more than 25 full-time-equivalent employees with annual wages averaging no more than $40,000. The bill sets out a complicated formula for determining the amount of the credit, using factors like the percentage of the insurance premiums paid by the employer and the average cost of premiums for small businesses in the employer’s state.

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AMT