FYI: The Senate Finance Committee got the ball moving this week on planned tax code reforms that aim to both encourage more charitable donations and provide greater oversight of the groups that receive them. On Wednesday, the committee passed a bill that would expand the deduction people who don’t itemize can claim for charitable donations and allow people over 70 to make tax-free donations from money taken out of their IRAs, among other incentives. It would also expand oversight by forcing groups with less than $25,000 in annual revenue to begin filing annual statements to justify their tax-exempt status and would expand the amount of information tax-exempt groups must publicly disclose about themselves each year. OMB Watch offers a backgrounder on the bill’s details–for those who speak finance as a second language. [2/7/03]