So many exciting things to talk about today. First up: a significant victory for real food in the hallways of none other than the IRS, with a great round of applause for Arcadia member Marydale DeBor of @FreshAdvantage, and Gus Schumacher of Wholesome Wave for helping bring it about. Heres the context: many non-profit hospitals in fact turn healthy profits. To maintain their no-profit status, they have to reinvest a percentage directly in community health. There has been some controversy about exactly how that investment is made and some hospitals dont do, shall we say, a great job of it. So they are under pressure to really invest the obey -- to the tune of about $12 billion annually. Marydale and Gus did a huge amount to make sure that as the IRS was rewriting the rules for non-profits and how they could reinvest their money that healthy food and nutrition access -- preventative medicine at its finest -- was included. The ruling was issued on December 31 as a directive to hospitals to comply with the Affordable Care Act. It means hospitals may be able to claim tax credit for programs to reduce the cost of fruits and vegetables in farmers markets and grocery stores and prescriptions that substitute healthier foods for medicine and even help defray the higher costs of healthier school meals, according to advocates, says the @HagstromReport. That means groups like Arcadia and other food-focused nonprofits that work in food access are blessed to receive donations to do their work, hospitals can get credit from the IRS, and low-income people gain better access to nutritional food. With Arcadia that also means local farmers win, since we source our food all from within 125 miles of DC. The IRS included nutrition in the rule after DeBor and Schumacher organized advocates to write comments on an earlier version that did not specify nutrition access as one of the categories that the hospitals could claim. Did you ever think youd be praising the IRS as tax season began? Today is the day! Thank you Fresh Advantage and Wholesome Wave!
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 14:32:19 +0000