Archive for category Uncategorized
Jewish organization loses charitable status
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has stripped a Jewish organization of its charitable status after finding its primary purpose was to serve as part of a tax-avoidance scheme.
In a letter to the Choson Kallah Fund of Toronto, Terry de March, director general of the CRA’s charities directorate, stated that the organization’s charitable status will be revoked, preventing it from issuing official donation receipts. Choson Kallah is no longer exempt from paying tax, unless it qualifies as a non-profit organization, and it may be taxed on its remaining assets, CRA stated.
“It remains our view that the charity has willingly lent its name and tax-receipting privileges to the tax shelter in exchange for monetary compensation. In our view, the charity has participated in a program designed to abuse the charitable gifts incentive provisions of the Income Tax Act,” stated a CRA document outlining the reasons behind the revocation.
“Between 2004 and 2005, the charity issued receipts in excess of $177 million, or 90 per cent of the charity’s total income, for donations of pharmaceuticals earmarked for international programs… In 2006 alone… the charity issued receipts totalling over $131 million,” far above the charity’s previous average of between $4 million to $6 million per year, the CRA said.
In receiving the pharmaceuticals and issuing tax receipts “the charity was merely operating as the receipting agent in this arrangement – issuing receipts for property it did not see, need or want and passing this property to a third-party organization,”the CRA said.
In exchange, Choson Kallah received a little more than one per cent of the value receipted, from which it paid a fee to an administrator, the letter stated. The charity did not attempt to independently verify the values of the donations for which it issued receipts, the agency said.
The CRA noted the charity netted only .05 per cent of the value of the donation receipts after expenses, and it failed to maintain the documentation necessary to prove recipients of allocated funds met the definition of charity required by law. Some recipients were not suffering poverty, but received money for wedding assistance, fertility treatments and to pay private debts.
Rabbi Eli Gross, president of Choson Kallah Fund, said the decision will be appealed.
“Right now, I don’t think I will be able to continue our good works,” Rabbi Gross is quoted as telling the Toronto Star. “I don’t know the mechanics of the tax fund, the legality of it or how it works.”
He told the Star that Choson Kallah has been operating for more than 20 years. It started as a small operation that helped people get married, but grew to provide $4 million in poverty relief, mostly to Israel.
Choson Kallah did not return calls from The CJN.
The CRA stated it is “reviewing all tax shelter-related donation arrangements (for example, schemes that typically promise donors tax receipts worth more than the actual amount of the donation)” and it “plans to audit every participating charity, promoter and investor.”
In the past few months, the International Charity Association Network and the Banyan Tree Foundation were stripped of their charitable status. Last week, the CRA stated in a news release it had “revoked the status of the Canadian Amateur Football Association as a registered Canadian amateur athletic association,” with the power to issue tax receipts for gifts or donations.
reviewed by Moishe ALexnader, CFC CEO
Collective Action Can Make Every Philanthropic Dollar Effective
Let’s embrace the diversity of our interests and find ways to weave these various strands into a strong and rich tapestry.
In their editorial entitled “Charity begins with priorities” (April 14), the editors of The Jerusalem Post suggest that the current economic climate requires the “rich” in our community to set aside their “philanthropic dalliances” in favor of funding communal needs determined by “collective decision-making.” That certainly is one way to address the problem the Post describes as “too many organizations… and too much competition for resources” in American Jewish life.
Of course, what may appear to be a “dalliance” to one philanthropist may be a strategic focus of another. Rather than bemoan the breadth and depth of Jewish interests, Jewish expression and Jewish spirituality, those of us who care deeply about the future of the Jewish community should embrace the diversity of our interests and find ways to weave these various strands into a strong and rich tapestry. What is required to make that happen is collective action, not collective decision-making.
In Israel, as in the US and Canada, the newest organizations appearing on the scene, often with significant funding from previously untapped sources, represent a renewed spirit, energy and interest in Jewish life, all of which deserve to be nurtured rather than abandoned.
The key to success during the current economic climate is neither to spurn new ideas nor to continue to allow everyone to make Shabbat for themselves. Rather, we must allow those new ideas to take root in existing organizations while simultaneously encouraging those organizations to work together to eliminate unnecessary duplication and redundancies in the Jewish communal world. The time has come for us to take collective action to make sure that every philanthropic dollar is spent as efficiently and effectively as possible. Cooperation and collaboration are no longer sufficient by themselves; to borrow from Lee Iacocca, every responsible Jewish organization must lead, follow or get out of the way, either by closing their doors entirely or by finding ways to integrate their programs into stronger, more viable entities.
Pursuing such an approach will require all of us - foundations and service providers alike - to make painful choices and decisions. And while no one likes to admit or accept that a project or program to which they have committed time and/or money is failing to meet the mark, the current situation demands that we think anew about all of our activities and seize this opportunity to restructure our organizations and initiatives so they have the greatest chance to succeed in the future. As the world learned from Jack Welch, the legendary CEO and chairman of General Electric, selling or closing businesses in which you are less than No. 1 or No. 2 in the marketplace is a proven way to move from weakness to strength.
Fortunately, both private and public conversations about consolidation are beginning to take place in boardrooms throughout our community. For instance, Rabbi David Ellenson, president of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, recently sent an open letter to faculty, students, alumni and friends of the HUC explaining the need to seriously consider consolidating its three stateside campuses (Cincinnati, Los Angeles and New York) into a new, more streamlined configuration, while still supporting its Jerusalem campus. Exploration of integrating the type of teacher training programs pioneered at CAJE (Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education) into JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North America) is ongoing, as are discussions between two of the leading organizations for Jewish teens: BBYO and PANIM.
Other, more private deliberations are also proceeding. But probably not enough.
For our community to realize the full benefit of greater collaboration and consolidation, bold action and visionary leadership will be required. And not only among our service providers; our philanthropists must also take a hard look at themselves. While the decision of Warren Buffet to leave his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most extreme example of funder collaboration, many other opportunities and vehicles for philanthropic partnerships exist and are deserving of serious consideration. Not only could the growth of funding collaboratives generate greater leverage and increase efficiencies, it would substantially reduce the reliance many organizations place on a single donor and, in turn, help them avoid the fate of groups adversely impacted by the Madoff-related collapse of high-profile and generous foundations such as Chais and Picower.
A shining example of how collective action can help our community is the impressive work of the Foundation for Jewish Camp. Under the able leadership of Jerry Silverman, the FJC is assisting individual camps while advocating for camping as a whole. Camps are improving and their numbers are growing because of the expertise the FJC is bringing to camping as a field. By establishing itself as a “center of excellence,” the FJC has positioned itself to be a critical resource for individual camps.
In partnership with several other foundations, we recently helped to launch a new American organization, Repair the World, in the hope that it will serve similar functions for program providers in the realm of Jewish service. And, in Israel, we hope the Haruv Institute will play a comparable role for organizations engaged in the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.
Our community has long talked about greater cooperation and collaboration. Now, the time to act has arrived. Consolidation and collective action represent two approaches with the greatest potential to encourage Jewish life to flourish.
Sandy Cardin is president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Schusterman Foundation-Israel.
reviewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/collective-action-can-make-every-philanthropic-dollar-effective/
Charity loses status over tax-shelter scam CRA says area group took in $2.8 million, but spent just $282,000
The Canada Revenue Agency has stripped an Ottawa-area charity of its charitable status after a damning two-year audit showed it was a front for a tax shelter scam offering big receipts for small donations.
The CRA ruling found that Healing and Assistance Not Dependence Canada expended a “proportionally negligible amount” of its income on charitable activities, making it ineligible to grant tax receipts.
The law says a charity must act exclusively for a charitable purpose to give tax receipts.
The charity purports to “encourage and assist and serve alcoholics, chemically dependent persons and their families, friends and associates primarily, but not exclusively within the Jewish community.” It has no website and no listing in the Yellow Pages.
Tax shelters allow people to avoid paying income tax. Tax-free savings accounts and RRSPs are examples of legal tax shelters.
Illegal, so-called aggressive shelters promise inflated tax receipts for nominal donations.
A company might ask you for a donation of $100 and promise you a tax receipt for $1,000. The company might claim your money is buying bulk supplies that,
if purchased individually, would be worth $1,000.
Aggressive tax shelters essentially sell receipts, pocketing the donations and bilking the federal government out of millions.
CRA spokeswoman Caitline Workman said tax receipts can be revoked if the government believes the donor should have realized the return was too good to be true, however, she would not say if the agency would revoke receipts donated to Healing and Assistance Not Dependence Canada.
The CRA audit, which took place between Sept. 1, 2006, and Aug. 31, 2008, showed the charity received almost $2.8 million from the Canadian International Aid Program, a registered tax shelter fronted by the Canadian Organization for International Philanthropy (COIP). Healing and Assistance Not Dependence Canada transferred 70 per cent of the money it received to other participants in the scheme, keeping $900,000 for itself. Of this, only $282,000 was devoted to charitable programs.
Even this figure is doubtful. Healing and Assistance Not Dependence Canada claimed to contract out its treatment services to American and Swiss treatment centres, but the CRA found there were no descriptions of how programs were to be delivered on the charity’s behalf.
The auditor wrote “the charity did not, in fact, deliver any of the charitable addiction counselling, treatment, or education programs for which it was ostensibly raising funds.
The CRA also found that 79 per cent of the charity’s income was spent on fundraising, which far exceeds the “reasonable” amount proscribed by law.
The true purpose of the charity, said the CRA, was to receive and transfer donations on behalf of the tax shelter program.
The money the charity funnelled out landed in questionable pockets. Almost $2 million was transferred to the Orion Foundation and PanAggregate Financial Corporation. Orion was the subject of an investigation by the Toronto Star, which found that its head, James Arion (who has gone by many other names), was giving $2,000 tax receipts for $1,000 donations. The CRA is challenging many of those receipts.
The Star showed the Orion Foundation is also connected to the Canadian International Aid Program and COIP, which claims to provide AIDS drugs to infected Africans.
No one from Orion, PanAggregate or COIP would provide comment to the Citizen.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/fp/Charity+loses+status+over+shelter+scam/1675746/story.html
Reviewed by Moishe Alexander