Are nonprofit organizations scamming the taxpayers
of North Carolina? I’m beginning to
wonder. The state currently has 9,500 of
these organizations. Every one of them has
an advantage over their for-profit competitors by getting generous tax breaks,
refunds and exemptions from collecting sales taxes.
All of these nonprofits profess they are providing a
valuable service. I ask, doesn’t every
business think the same? If their
customers didn’t believe so, their doors would be shuttered. Yet, the state grants privileges to those
they deem more worthy than others.
Usually, a number of these nonprofits use their status to lobby
legislators to implement laws that are contrary to the general welfare of their
citizens. Here is an example of a nonprofit
lobbyist spinning the oncoming Armageddon:
The N.C. Center for Nonprofits, which represents 1,600 charitable
agencies, cited Monday the potential effect on nonprofits overall, saying it
could reduce state revenue by as much as $3 billion by the end of fiscal
2016-2017.
Officials with the nonprofit center recognize that some form of
tax-code reform, including sales tax, is going to be enacted by the General
Assembly. That includes charging sales tax on many professional services, such
as car repairs, haircuts and going to an attorney, as part of shifting the
state’s tax code more toward consumption.
The officials say they are concerned reform will have an either-or
financial implication: either the cost is passed on to consumers or absorbed by
the nonprofit. They said proposals to limit or eliminate deductions for
charitable giving by individuals and corporations will hurt their ability to
meet community need.
Can you feel the ensuing disaster that is to befall us? What is really pathetic is the lie that this
lobbying group has proclaimed. N.C. House
Bill #998 does not put any caps on charitable deductions. And if you listen to the political
advertisements on the radio, you’ll hear all sorts of lies by nonprofit
organizations that are too numerous to document here.
To illustrate how innocuous some nonprofits seem the Mises Institute relates the
following:
A large number of nonprofit organizations
are really private, tax-exempt corporations that exist off government money.
For example, the American Lung Association collects charitable contributions
from individuals, corporations, and foundations ostensibly to help fund
research into cures for diseases of the lungs. In reality, however, the ALA
uses private contributions to lobby the federal government for research grants
for scientists (government-funded science) and even larger shares of money for
itself.
Not only does the ALA argue for
politically-based scientific research, however, but it also lobbies the
government to pass regulation after regulation. For example, the EPA-caused
gas-price fiasco of this past summer had the ALA's fingerprints all over it, as
that organization was one of the loudest voices in the passage of the
fraudulent and costly Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
In other words, the nice lady representing
the ALA who took donations at your home or office really was doing nothing more
than asking you to help fund an alliance between that organization and
environmental groups seeking to drastically lower your standard of living. And
you thought that all you were doing was helping cure lung diseases.
Maybe North Carolinians should rethink the value of nonprofit
organizations. The republicans in the
General Assembly are taking the right steps.
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