GOP’s Tax on Foundations Takes Aim at Billionaire Philanthropy

After the House released a draft tax bill last week, Thomas Blaney worked until near-midnight analyzing its impact on his clients, some 700 foundations overseeing billions of dollars in assets designated for charity.

The next morning they all got the bad news in a bulletin from Blaney, the partner-in-charge of philanthropy at accounting firm PKF O’Connor Davies: Republicans were proposing a steep increase in levies on private foundations. His phone didn’t stop ringing for days, as alarmed clients fretted over the fate of their charitable giving.

One foundation with several billion dollars of assets — a threshold that may mean ...