Public Health Intersection

One of the things we pride ourselves on at PHFE is our focus on compliance.

PHFE is the trustee of hundreds of fiscal sponsorship arrangements that require us to be able to comply with numerous standards and reporting requirements.

For the most part we believe these standards and requirements are meant to assure that PHFE is being honest and responsible in managing the resources and expectations of our funders and partners.

Recently there has been a lot of effort focused in congress to repeal a component of the Affordable Care Act that will require businesses to prepare 1099 forms for all vendors that they pay over $600 for goods and/or services. The argument against this proposal is that preparing 1099’s for goods purchased costing $600 or more is an excessive and undue burden on business since now we only have to prepare 1099’s when we purchase services costing $600 or more.

Am I missing something here?

Don’t most of us have accounting systems that can automatically generate the 1099’s?

Don’t we want people to pay the taxes they legitimately owe, just like we do?

Also, one way to head off new taxes is to do the best job possible in collecting the ones that are already on the books.

When I worked as a lobbyist we used to call these sorts of things “trophy bills” which meant that, while they didn’t accomplish much, they demonstrated the power and influence that various organizations had in the political process.

Let’s invest our political capital in meaningful pursuits and leave the whining and trophies to others.

Nonprofit organizations have an interesting, and not often available, opportunity to be a leader in fostering accountability and compliance by just doing the right thing instead of joining the chorus of whining.