Friday

GOVERNMENT CONTROL

While Horseless Carriage Club of America officials say they have not yet totally cleaned up from the aftereffects of the IRS rescinding the club’s 501(c)(3) non-profit status, they are ready to move on from the ordeal with a renewed focus as a club after more than two years of bureaucratic maneuvering. In the months after the IRS declared that it would revoke the HCCA’s 501(c)(3) non-profit status in May 2011 and consider it a for-profit organization, many club members feared that the loss of that status would effectively spell the end for the club. Though the club, founded in 1937, had spent much of its existence as a 501(c)(7) non-profit organization – as a social or recreational club, according to the IRS tax code – it switched to 501(c)(3) non-profit status in 2007, thus enabling donations to the club to become tax deductible (and, the club hoped, resulting in more and larger donations to the club). That change, however, also necessitated that the club provide an educational aspect, and the club had a difficult time proving that it had fulfilled that obligation during a subsequent IRS audit. Richard Cutler, who served as president of the HCCA in 2011 and has since sparred with the IRS on the club’s behalf, wrote on the club’s website that he and other club officials decided that the club wouldn’t just roll over and die. They responded to the revocation with a formal appeal and in the meantime came up with a fallback plan that included the formation earlier this year of two spinoff organizations: the Horseless Carriage Education Institution, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated exclusively to educating the public about horseless carriages and early automotive history, and the Horseless Carriage Club Association, a 501(c)(7) non-profit that would assume the club’s ongoing social activities – its tours, meets, and conventions.

The former organization, with a board of directors but no members, has since assumed about $26,000 of the HCCA’s tax-deductible donations, while the latter organization may not be needed after all.
Though the IRS has since denied the HCCA’s appeal of the revocation, the HCCA pressed on with a plan to revert the original club back to 501(c)(7) non-profit status, allowing it to remain in existence and theoretically reducing the number of hassles regarding the club’s lifetime members and other assets (and thus making the newly formed Horseless Carriage Club Association effectively redundant). “The IRS has been good at providing little in the way of follow-up to questions as they relate to ‘what’s next?’” Cutler wrote. “With the lack of these specifics, we are moving forward with what we believe to be correct. Our goal is to show good intentions reducing the possibility of any further action by the IRS towards our organization. We will take silence as a positive sign. It has been suggested by some that we continue to fight the ruling. All evidence indicates that this will only result in more expense with no change in status. It is time get this behind us and move on.” The club has scheduled a number of tours and other events for 2014, and Cutler wrote that the HCEI has begun to develop relevant educational materials, as per its mission. For more information, visit: www.hcca.org
 photo credit: © 2013 hemmings.com
text credit: © 2013 Dan Stroh/hemmings.com