The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "hospital taxes" ...
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"Prescription for Profits"
The Wall Street Journal examined whether nonprofit hospitals, which account for the majority of hospitals in the U.S., deserve the billions of dollars in annual tax exemptions they receive. The Journal's series revealed that, far from struggling financially, many nonprofit hospitals have become profit machines while shirking their charitable missions. Among the series' findings: Some pay tens of thousands of dollars upfront' others have closed facilities in poor inner cities and built new ones in affluent suburbs; and one hospital put patients' lives at risk to increase its lucrative liver-transplant business.
Tags: charitable causes; medical service; patient care; hospital taxes; nonprofit hospitals; Amish; Mennonites
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Hospital Charity Gets Checkup
The story "looked at the level of charity care such hospitals provide to low-income and uninsured patients, along with the tax breaks they receive." They contrasted that with the "levels of charity care provided by for-profit and public hospitals."
Tags: hospitals; public health; healthcare; charity hospitals; uninsured patients; non-profit hospitals
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Shriners Hospitals for Children Investigation Series
Freelance reporter Sandy Frost investigated a tip from Shriner Vernon Hill that there were irregularities in the way the fraternal Shriners organization and the charitable Shriners organizations were handling their money and not complying with Standards For Charitable Accountability.
Tags: Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine AKA Shriners; Standards for Charity Accountability; 2001 Criminal Tax Manual; Hershel Gober; Philanthropic Research, Inc. AKA Guidestar.org; Second Avenue Partners; Mike Slade; Aquantive; Nick Hanauer; Shriners; Masons; Knights Templar; Royal Order of Jesters; National Sojourners Order of Quetzacoatl; Mike Severe, Imperial Officer, Shrine of America; compensation; real estate transactions; excessive benefit transactions; charitable donation fraud; HIPPA; Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; Vernon Hill; Suite101.com; Paul Dolnier; 501c10 non profit fraternal corporation; 501c3 non profit charity; Better Business Bureau; Charity Watch Center; Pennsylvania's Charitable Special Investigation Unit; Internal Revenue Service; IRS; good old boy system; U.S. Senate Committee on Finance; whistleblower retaliation; Charles G. Cumpstone Jr., Potentate Stewart W. Lewis; Charities Review Council of Minnesota; Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; GAAP; Independent Sector; SLAPP: strategic lawsuits against public participation; Cabiri Royal Order of Scotland; International Order of Demolay
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Is tax-exempt LVH sharing enough of its wealth?
The Lehigh Valley Hospital built up a record $76 million surplus in 2005, but is doing little to give back to the community.
Tags: Lehigh; Lehigh Valley Hospital; LVH; hospital
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Great Expectations: A Tax Credit Designed to Spur Hiring Seems Promising -- at First
The Journal reports on the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, an incentive aimed at encouraging employers to hire people on welfare. The story focuses on Aramark, a company employing about 100,000 low wage workers in food courts, hospitals and convention centers. The well-intentioned idea, however, was not working. Aramark and other companies found the requirements were too tough.
Tags: unemployment; turnover; business; workers; training; social services; Congress
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Tax Exempt!
U.S. News & World Report investigates various tax-code violations by nonprofits. Many nonprofits look and act like normal companies, the story finds. They operate numbers of successful ventures, make profits, and report exorbitant executive compensations that have caught the eye of the Internal Revenue Service. Many big names, including National Geographic, NASDAQ, and the National Rifle Association, enjoy tax-exempt status along with more than 1.1 million nonprofits. Some of the key findings are: many nonprofits spend huge dollars on lobbying the Congress; hospitals for indigent patients are not much different from hospitals operating for profit; nonprofits usually report their businesses as related to their main activity, consequently to their tax-exempt status.
Tags: Alta Bates Medical Center; National Football League; charities; lobbying; lobbyists; Congress; IRS; 501(c); Internal Revenue Code; associations; deductions
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Paris-Moscow: The Strange, Illegal Journey of the Larionov-Goncharova Archive
This recounts one of the last great art stories of the Cold War. At its core is art the Soviets had outlawed and denounced for half a century but whose value they had belatedly come to recognize. In the fall of 1986 a treasure trove of Russian art and documents was taken from a house in Paris to the Soviet Embassy. The owner, Alexandra Tomilina, was close to death in a Swiss hospital. A few months earlier, she had traded them to the Soviet government in exchange for a small monthly pension. For a few francs, the Soviets had acquired artworks and documents worth millions. However, French inheritance tax is very high, and the Soviet government would owe about 60 percent of the total value in taxes. And French cultural- property export regulations are strict. The treasures were smuggled back to Russia to avoid paying the taxes. They are inaccessible to everyone, in storage in the basement of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Until the Russians and the French negotiate the issues of tax evasion and smuggling of cultural property, that's where they will remain.
Tags: None
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Confronting a Costly Plague
A Union-Tribune investigation reports that "violence is conservatively estimated to cost $15.5 billion a year in medical care nationwide.... (Victims range from those) stitched up and released or who spend weeks on a respirator their medical care adds to the nation's swollen health care bill. All Americans pay that bill through increases in taxes, insurance premiums and hospital charges
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No title (id: 10324)
Village Voice (New York) discloses how the CEO's of supposedly charitable, tax-exempt hospitals make millions; the article questions the tax-exempt status, shows who pays the bill and that the hospitals are hardly charitable, Sept. 22, 1992.
Tags: NY Lagnado 2 pages
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Warehouses of wealth: The tax-free economy
"Nonprofit businesses are American's fastest growing industry. Yet the government doesn't keep track. There are 1.2 million organizations tax-exempt as a nonprofit, including many surprisingly profitable ones. Like the NFL. ...[ The reporters] determined the magnitude and cost of these tax-exempt businesses, which made $500 billion in 1990 -- nearly six times the incomes of farms of five times that of utilities...Taxpayers make up for what these businesses don't pay -- more than $36 billion a year, by the reporters' calculations. What do taxpayers get in return? Damned little charity." Seven-part series includes: big profits, big salaries, growing commercialism of nonprofit hospitals, universities, museums and other institutions.
Tags: taxes; hospitals; endowments; Blue Cross; Blue Shield; donors; disclosure; nonprofit insurance and pensions; real estate; property; economics; Form 990s; IRS; executive salaries