WASHINGTON — Acting IRS Commissioner Kevin Brown recently wrote to the Senate Finance Committee that the line between tax-exempt and commercial entities is blurring, listing credit unions as key offenders, which CUNA did not take to kindly to.
CUNA President/CEO Dan Mica wrote in a letter to Brown that he "must strongly object" to his letter that included what Mica termed as "the wrongful portrayal of credit unions a "hard to distinguish from for profit banks"–thereby undermining the justification for credit unions' exemption from federal income taxation." He also accuses Brown of trying to associate credit unions with other entities recently receiving public scrutiny of their tax-exemptions.
Mica reminded Brown that Congress decides who is tax-exempt and who is not and went through the operating and public policy reasons for the credit union tax-exemption.
Recommended For You
Last week, Treasury had listed the credit union tax-exemption as a way to lower the corporate income tax. CUNA's letter to IRS, under the Department of Treasury, also noted "IRS's difficulty in recognizing the differences between credit unions and commercial banks has manifested itself in the agency's treatment of unrelated business income taxation for state chartered credit unions."
Mica expressed concern that bankers have been given access at the highest levels of Treasury while credit unions "have not been afforded similar interaction at this level." CUNA has met with IRS, he clarified, but without the complete picture of the bankers' charges.
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
