The Nonprofit Sector in the U.S.: A Brief History

Some of you may know that the Internal Revenue Service provides aggregate tax data through it Statistics of Income (SOI) program. To celebrate SOI’s 90th anniversary, the program began to publish a series of retrospective articles on a number of tax-related subjects.

In particular, you might be interested in “A History of the Tax-Exempt Sector: An SOI Perspective.” As expected from SOI, you will find statistical data on public charities and foundations from tax years 1985 to 2004. What's surprising is the section of the article that covers the legislative history of tax-exemption in the United States. If you are giving a presentation this topic, Figure A or Appendix B can be used as handouts since they concisely describe major legislation from the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894 to the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

The full article is available at the SOI web site.