Two prominent senators have written to the Internal Revenue Service seeking information about what the agency is doing to ensure that non-profit hospitals comply with the requirements for providing sufficient community benefits to justify their tax-exempt status.

 Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a senior member of that committee, have asked the IRS to provide their committee with specific information about how the IRS evaluates non-profit hospitals’ Form 990 Schedule H; about guidance the IRS provides regarding how hospitals define their communities and their communities’ needs; about the performance and outcome of IRS reviews of individual non-profit hospitals’ compliance with legal tax-exemption requirements; and about the status of the IRS’s anticipated report to Congress on tax-exempt and public hospitals.

Go here to see the senators’ news release about their letter and the letter itself.