The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 7th Edition [Hardcover]

Bruce R. Hopkins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471196290 | ISBN-13: 978-0471196297 | Publication Date: April 2, 1998 | Edition: 7

Nonprofit organizations face a special set of rules governing everything from how they charter their organization, to their methods of measuring unrelated business income, and how they lobby (and if, in fact, they should continue to be allowed to lobby).

Nonprofit lawyers, accountants, and directors need an easy-to-use reference work in understandable language to help them comprehend the issues and make informed decisions.

This core volume (ISBN 0471-196290) is supplemented annually.

The 2002 Cumulative Supplement (ISBN 0471-443425)includes:

• New information on: relief of the poor, constitutional law framework, business leagues, public use of facilities, taxation of social clubs, and the sale of club assets.
• New and revised sections on Internet activities, ancillary joint ventures, and state action doctrine.

This supplement updates the core volume, Hopkins/The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 7th Edition (ISBN 0471-196290).

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A benchmark resource, revised and expanded

The Eighth Edition to The Law of Tax Exempt Organizations is an important revision and expansion of the definitive one-volume source of information on federal laws by the leading legal authority in the nonprofit sector. Written in plain English and supplemented annually, this book helps the lawyers and managers of tax-exempt organizations make sure that they are up-to-date on all current regulations pertaining to tax-exempt organizations, and that they are well-prepared to make decisions about their organizations actions and future. The Eighth Edition provides detailed documentation and citations, such as references to regulations, rulings, cases, and tax literature (including current articles and tax law review notes) and includes an exhaustive index, Internal Revenue Code citations, tables of cases, and IRS rulings. Nonprofit executives, officers, and directors, and attorneys; accountants; members of boards of directors; and consultants will this popular resource to be an essential reference. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Bruce R. Hopkins is the country's leading authority on tax-exempt organizations and is a lawyer with the firm Polsinelli, Shalton, Welte, P.C. He is also the author of nineteen books, including The Legal Answer Book for Private Foundations, The Legal Answer Book for Nonprofit Organizations; The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 8E; Private Foundations: Tax Law and Compliance, 2E; A Legal Guide to Starting and Managing a Nonprofit Organization, 4E; and The Tax Law of Charitable Giving, 3E, as well as the newsletter Bruce Hopkins'  Nonprofit Counsel, all published by Wiley. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 952 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 7 edition (April 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471196290
• ISBN-13: 978-0471196297
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,962,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bruce R. Hopkins is a lawyer who divides his time between the writing of books and his monthly newsletter, and the practice of law.

He is a senior partner in the law firm of Polsinelli Shughart PC, practicing in the firm's Kansas City, Missouri, and Washington, D.C., offices. He specializes in the representation of nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations. His practice ranges over the entirety of law matters involving exempt organizations, with emphasis on the formation of nonprofit organizations, acquisition of recognition of tax-exempt status for them, governance and the law, the private inurement and private benefit doctrines, the intermediate sanctions rules, legislative and political campaign activities issues, public charity and private foundation rules, unrelated business planning, use of exempt and for-profit subsidiaries, joint venture planning, tax shelter involvement, review of annual information returns, Internet communications developments, the law of charitable giving (including planned giving), and fundraising law issues.

Mr. Hopkins is the series editor of John Wiley & Sons' Nonprofit Law, Finance, and Management Series. He is the author (or, in some instances, co-author) of 26 books that are currently on the market. His first book, The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, was first published in 1975. His most recent book, Fundraising Law Made Easy, was published in 2009. He writes a monthly newsletter, Bruce R. Hopkins' Nonprofit Counsel. All of these publications are published by John Wiley & Sons.

He received the 2007 Outstanding Nonprofit Lawyer Award (Vanguard Lifetime Achievement Award) from the American Bar Association, Section of Business Law, Committee on Nonprofit Organizations. He is listed in "The Best Lawyers in America," Nonprofit Organizations/Charities Law, 2007-2010.

He participates in many conferences and seminars, including those sponsored by Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Texas, PESI, AICPA, Salk Institute, and Loyola University (Los Angeles).

He maintains the Nonprofit Law Center, accessible at www.nonprofitlawcenter.com.

He earned his J.D. and LL.M. degrees at the George Washington University National Law Center, and his B.A. at the University of Michigan.

He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the state of Missouri.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent technical resource, April 25, 2001

By 

James D. DeWitt "Alaska Fan" (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 7th Edition (Hardcover)

The nonprofit sector is a huge part of the American economy. Nonprofits range from multinationals to your local little league. While, technically, the same body of tax laws applies to all of them, the level of sophistication varies as dramatically as the size of the nonprofit. And while the big nonprofits can afford to buy expertise, smaller nonprofits have to manage more of the tasks themselves. This book can help.

Hopkins' book is an excellent reference for attorneys and accounts and nonprofit executives with some knowledge of nonprofit tax laws work. It's not likely to be useful to and it's not written for the average volunteer. This is a fairly technical resource, and while nonprofit tax law gets a lot more complicated than Hopkins, this is a very good middle-level resource.

If I have any criticism of Hopkins it's this: in recent editions he has removed important subjects from this reference and spun them off into separate books at equally high prices. Most of the treatment of charitable donations, for example, is now in a different book. Private foundations are now in a different book. Excess benefits transactions are in a different book. You can spend a ton of money on Professor Hopkins. It costs him one star in my rating.

Even so, as a basic entry point, this book is indispensable. I've attended seminars by Prof. Hopkins and read most his books, and he is very knowledgeable and does a good job at the difficult task of translating IRS-speak into comprehensible language. This book should be a part of every nonprofit lawyer and accountant's library.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very comprehensive "hornbook.", August 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 7th Edition (Hardcover)

In mid-1999 I read this treatise in conjunction with the author's one day course on the Law of Tax Exempt Organizations. The book is essentially a "hornbook:" a summary of law geared towards lawyers and accountants, rather than the casual reader. It would be especially helpful for lawyers and accountants in outside firms who counsel a variety of different tax exempt organizations and are confronted with questions of how to structure an organization or several related organizations. The material is valuable but no easy slogging, so if you can take the course (which in mid-1999 was approx. $230 and included the book), it would be worth the extra $70 or so.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is the 2009 Cumulative Supplement, June 8, 2009

By 

J. Cours - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 2009 Cumulative Supplement (Paperback)

I've submitted a suggested update to the catalog, but I'm adding this review just to make sure buyers are aware of what they're getting: the $80 "paperback version" of this book is the cumulative supplement, not a paperback version of the hornbook itself. It provides updated information on how the law has changed since the ninth edition of the hornbook was published but does not reproduce the contents of the hardbound version.