Steve and Judy Browning
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Steve and Judy Browning |
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The tax credit has prompted a number taxpayers in our community to make endowed gifts to local charities. These gifts would not have come without the tax credit, and future gifts of their magnitude will not come in the future if the tax credit is not extended. What kinds of gifts are we referring to? There are dozens of such gifts made in the Helena area. Gifts endowing some of our community's most vital non-profit organizations, such as the United Way, YMCA, St. Peter's Hospital, Holter Museum of Art, Myrna Loy Theater, Carroll College, the Lewis and Clark Community Foundation, a number of our local churches, and many, many others. |
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The cost of these gifts to the Montana treasury has been relatively small, and the long term benefits of these gifts will be immeasurable in terms of the positive impacts they will have in strengthening the ability of our local non-profits to meet important community needs forever in the future. Further, many of these gifts are providing taxable income to their donors for their life, which is an important offset to the credits claims on the Montana treasury. This last statement is often overlooked by people who are asking how much the credit costs. Montana historically has lagged behind the other states in the USA in terms of our endowed philanthropy. We don't have wealthy charitable foundations that people in other states use to get important new community projects started. However, as the benefits of Montana's tax credit for endowed philanthropy continue to be distributed to the permanent treasuries of our local community based organizations - - our schools, our churches, boy scouts, girl scouts, etc. - - we will better equipped to meet the future. We hope that Montana will keep the tax credit.
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