Catholic Worker Refuses to Register with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service

international | anti-capitalism | other press Tuesday March 27, 2007 15:35 by PP

"Catholic Worker altruism isn't deductible" The charity won't register
with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit. Donors
say they don't mind.

By Paul Pringle, Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2007

Ted Von der Ahe walks past clusters of shopping carts to reach the
well-scrubbed building where he works with food, the commodity that
made the Vons grocery heir rich.

But these shopping carts are heaped with the ragged belongings of the
homeless, and the food is free. Von der Ahe dishes it up as a
part-time volunteer for the Los Angeles Catholic Worker soup kitchen
on skid row.

"There is a beautiful focus here on helping the poor," said Von der
Ahe, 57, who was cleaning the kitchen's ancient stove after a lunch
for hundreds of street people.

The former priest's labors carry on a family tradition of charity,
although with an organization that does not qualify for donations from
the Von der Ahe Foundation.

That's because the Catholic Worker is the rare charity that refuses,
on philosophical grounds, to register with the Internal Revenue
Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit. The stance dates back seven
decades to founder Dorothy Day's admonition to keep the federal
government at arm's length.

By toiling outside the system, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker denies
itself access to institutional funding — foundation stipends,
government grants, United Way dollars — that can be the life's blood
for many charities. Contributions to the Catholic Worker are not
tax-deductible, even though it feeds and shelters the neediest of the
needy and provides them with medical and dental care.

To get by, the tiny communal group — it has just nine full-time
members — depends on the likes of Von der Ahe and a makeshift network
of no-strings-attached altruism. Week to week, the Catholic Worker
appears to start from scratch, with gifts of greens from a downtown
vegetable wholesaler, loaves of day-old bread from neighborhood
stores, and cash from a small but loyal base of benefactors.

Actor Martin Sheen, one of its most generous supporters, recently
sent $10,000. "They're my heroes," he said.

Catherine Morris, who has run the 6th Street kitchen with her husband
since the early 1970s, said typical donations are $25 or $50, and most
come from a mailing list of about 7,500 people who receive the
bimonthly Catholic Worker newspaper.

"We have this idea in the back of our head that money corrupts," said
Morris, 72, a former nun who has a wide and tireless smile. She said
the group collects about $200,000 a year. "It seems the first thing
that money goes to is salaries, and we have no salaries."

Later, after the lunch bustle, Morris was sweeping the kitchen's
garden patio, where a middle-aged man paced between the palms and
tipu trees, engaged in a loud conversation with himself. On the
street beyond, spectral figures nudged their piled-high shopping
carts along the curb or dozed on the urine-stained sidewalk.

"The money we don't get because of the tax thing is irrelevant,"
Morris said.

Her husband, Jeff Dietrich, agreed. "We don't want the federal
government's permission to do this," said Dietrich, a 61-year-old
with a robust mustache.

"Jesus really didn't have anything to do with the state, and he
wanted people to take care of each other."

The roughly 135 Catholic Worker communities in the United States are
independent of one another and have no central organization or
official relationship with the church hierarchy. Almost anyone can
launch a Catholic Worker group, and not all of the communities last,
members say.

For practical reasons, some communities have signed up with the
government as 501(c)(3) nonprofits, meaning that they file tax
returns, have boards of directors and must comply with all the other
rules the government imposes on public charities.

The Night on the Streets Catholic Worker in Berkeley filled out its
IRS paperwork to satisfy an Alameda County food bank.

"It's the only way they'll let us get access to their food," said
Catholic Worker coordinator J.C. Orton.

In Santa Ana, the Catholic Worker has tried to compromise on the IRS
quandary: It has created an affiliated charity that files a tax
return to mollify a food bank.

"The business of food at my level is apolitical," said Dwight Smith,
who heads the Santa Ana group with his wife, Leia.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker tenders no IRS forms of any kind. It
does pay property taxes, because founder Day felt local governments
delivered crucial services, Dietrich said.

Charity watchdogs say it's always best for philanthropic
organizations to go though the IRS process. They say the tax
exemption inevitably brings in more donations, and the regimen of
documentation helps ensure that the funds are not misspent.

"Organizations need to have some oversight and checks and balances,"
said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of
Philanthropy. "People can turn bad."

But longtime donors such as Pat Heffron, a physician who was washing
food carts at the Los Angeles kitchen the other day, say they have no
qualms about giving to the Catholic Worker.

"I don't donate just to deduct it off my taxes," said Heffron, 61.
"It's what the gospels are calling on us to do."

Day and Peter Maurin, a former Christian Brother, founded the
Catholic Worker in 1933 as an agitating New York newspaper of the
same name. It soon evolved into a movement to aid the destitute, with
Catholic Worker "hospitality houses" springing up across the nation
and overseas.

A writer, social activist and pacifist, Day embraced the radical
politics of the Depression era — her brand has been described as
"Christian anarchism" — along with more orthodox teachings of Roman
Catholic morality, including an opposition to abortion.

Day, who died in 1980 and has been proposed for sainthood, maintained
that charity should be a personal endeavor and that living among the
poor is a virtue.

The Catholic Worker here is a frequent critic of the Los Angeles
Archdiocese. It railed against the building of the Cathedral of Our
Lady of the Angels, labeling it a $200-million extravagance — money
that the Catholic Worker says should have gone to the poor.

Dietrich and Morris have been arrested dozens of times during
demonstrations for causes that included nuclear disarmament,
farmworker rights and portable toilets for skid row. They say the
protests are more motivation to have nothing to do with the
government.

In addition to the "Hippie Kitchen," as its cookery is known, the
Catholic Worker operates a medical and dental clinic and puts up a
dozen homeless people and the nine community members at its Boyle
Heights headquarters, an old 15-bedroom Victorian home.

Tony Trafecanty, who quit his job as an airline pilot to open a skid
row bakery that employed the homeless, donated the residence and three
other buildings about 25 years ago. He and his wife, Joan, still live
in the house next door, where they raised six children.

The couple received no tax benefit from the gift of the property,
which they bought for $100,000.

Sheen said the lack of a write-off makes contributions to the
Catholic Worker "the purest form of charity." He first became aware of
the group when he visited its New York soup kitchen as a struggling
young actor. "I was there to eat," he said.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker serves 3,000 meals a week, most
during three lunches that begin at 9:30 in the morning, members say.
Volunteers get busy shortly after dawn in the cinder block kitchen,
preparing huge quantities of rice and beans, often with meat, along
with salad and buttered bread. Much of the food is donated.
Otherwise, the members buy $500 to $600 worth of groceries a week,
Morris said. If there is extra money, she said, they purchase
something special to enliven the fare, such as grated cheese or sour
cream.

"I love these people," said Gregory Gibson, 47, a tall man in
dreadlocks who regularly eats at the kitchen. He said he has been
living on skid row for 13 years, landing there after a run of
"personal problems."

"They do it out of the kindness of their heart," Gibson said of the
Catholic Worker. "Isn't that amazing?"

He was waiting for a friend at the dental clinic, which sees patients
on Fridays. Rolling Hills Estates dentist Rich Meehan has been
volunteering there for 16 years.

"I don't have any financial worries, so why not do something?" said
Meehan, 72, whose workspace in the clinic is set off by a rickety
5-foot partition. The dental chair is a relic.

"This is pretty basic," Meehan said with a laugh. "We don't do
crowns."

Like the homeless, the Catholic Worker members depend on the county
for healthcare that the clinics cannot handle, Morris said. They also
eat the food served at the kitchen and wear donated clothes.

Their largest source of revenue is the $20,000 to $22,000 from an
annual anti-hunger walk by students at three Catholic high schools,
Morris said. Before Sheen's $10,000, the last windfall was a $50,000
bequest from Los Angeles philanthropist Joan Palevsky, who died a
year ago.

The members had barely heard of Palevsky. "We got a letter, it said
'sign here,' and a check came," Morris recalled.

She said the only money-related run-ins with authorities involved bank
account interest and unpaid telephone tax. The group does not believe
in usury, so it gave away the interest earnings without paying taxes
on them. It ignored the phone levy because the proceeds helped fund
the military, Morris said.

The results were a letter and a visit from the IRS, but the Catholic
Worker held firm and the government dropped the matters, she added.

Just in case there is another knock on the door, the Catholic Worker
has kept a record of every donation since the 1970s, in three-ring
binders. Its checkbook is stored in a box.

"We call that box 'the office,' " Morris said.