Читать книгу The Tax Law of Charitable Giving - Bruce Hopkins R., Bruce R. Hopkins, David Middlebrook - Страница 48

For purposes of the federal tax rules, the term trade or business, in this setting, includes “any activity which is carried on for the production of income from the sale of goods or the performance of services.”⁵²¹ Accordingly, most activities that would constitute a trade or business under basic tax law principles⁵²² are considered a trade or business for purposes of the unrelated trade or business rules.⁵²³

This definition of trade or business is broadly encompassing and embraces nearly every activity of a tax-exempt organization. Absent a specific exemption,⁵²⁴ only investment activities generally escape this classification.

In this sense, every tax-exempt organization is viewed as a bundle of activities, each of which is a trade or business. Thus, the IRS is empowered to examine each of the activities in the bundle in search of an unrelated business endeavor. As Congress chose to state the principle, “an activity does not lose identity as a trade or business merely because it is carried on within a larger aggregate of similar activities or within a larger complex of other endeavors which may, or may not, be related to the exempt purposes of the organization.”⁵²⁵ This is known as the fragmentation rule.

Congress also enacted a rule stating, “Where an activity carried on for profit constitutes an unrelated trade or business, no part of such trade or business shall be excluded from such classification merely because it does not result in profit.”⁵²⁶