Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Tax Exemption And The Health Care Industry: Are The Challenges To Tax-Exempt Status Justified?, Kevin B. Fischer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The provision of health care has traditionally been deemed a charitable function.' Therefore, hospitals and other health care institutions have been afforded the benefits of tax exemption. As a standard for determining which entities merit the tax exemption and which do not, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "Service") developed what has come to be known as the community benefit test. At the federal level, this test has been the basis for awarding tax- exempt status to hospitals and other health care entities State legislatures have traditionally followed the federal government's standards for tax exemption and have thus allowed health …