Legal Information

The Equivalency Determination process for making international grants, used primarily by private foundations as an alternative to expenditure responsibility, is articulated in IRS Revenue Procedure 92-94. That ruling allows private foundations to rely on an affidavit from the foreign grantee organization, prepared for the grantor charity or for another grantor, that the grantee is the equivalent of a public charity under U.S. tax law.

In 2012, the Treasury and IRS proposed significant rule changes to make international giving easier, more cost effective, and less redundant for both U.S. grantmakers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These rule changes were published in the document "Reliance Standards for Making Good Faith Determinations" in the Federal Register.

In Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement of these rule changes, she remarked that the regulations cleared the way for the establishment of organizations that can serve as repositories for equivalency determinations — such as NGOsource — though the regulations do not specifically address the matter.

For more information on NGOsource visit http://www.ngosource.org/.

• Council Letter to Treasury
  Urges Treasury to Keep Updates to Revenue Procedure 92-94 (Equivalency Determination) on 2012-2013 Guidance Priority List
  April 12, 2012
• Council Request to Treasury to Amend Revenue Procedure 92-94
  September 6, 2011
• Equivalency Determination Information Repositories
  Council Follow-up Letter to Treasury
  November 15, 2010
• Equivalency Determination Information Repositories
  Council Follow-up Letter to Treasury
  March 22, 2010


• Council Request to Treasury to Update Revenue Procedure 92-94
  December 28, 2009
• COF Proposed Revisions to Rev. Proc. 92-94
  The Council's legal team prepared this draft proposal for updating the IRS' equivalency determination ruling in Rev. Proc. 92-94.
• Related resource from the Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities
  Improve the Tax Rules Governing International Grantmaking