IRA Charitable Rollover Once Again Vanishes into Thin Air

If you so much as blinked, you missed it. Only during the last two weeks of 2014 was a charity able to tell eligible donors with certainty that they could make “qualified charitable distributions” from their traditional or Roth IRAs before the end of the year.

Miraculously, many charities still managed to get the word out, at least on a limited basis. Even more miraculously, some donors actually managed to complete IRA charitable rollover gifts by December 31st. In certain cases, this was because 1) they acted before December 19th – which was the day the 2014 IRA charitable rollover provision became law – and 2) the provision was retroactive to January 1st.

Now that 2015 is here, donors and charities are in the same position they were in at this time last year. Fortunately, this is by no means a hopeless state of affairs. For a review of all the gift options that remain available, please see the featured article from PG Calc’s 2014 eRate newsletter.

Going forward, both charities and donors are hoping the IRA charitable rollover will return, ideally with the following three features:

• It will be retroactive to January 1, 2015 and will become law with plenty of notice before the end of this year.
• It will be permanent.
• It will apply not only to current outright gifts, but also to life income plans.
  

While it is too soon to know whether any of these three wishes will be granted in 2015, PG Calc will continue to monitor pertinent developments and communicate them as appropriate.