Sen. Marsha Blackburn questions Planned Parenthood’s tax-exempt status after it offers Botox
Planned Parenthood affiliates offer Botox and other cosmetic treatments while operating as a tax-exempt charity, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn said this abuses its nonprofit status.
The Tennessee Republican wrote a March 26 letter to Robert Malone, director of exempt organizations and government entities at the Internal Revenue Service, regarding the reproductive health service’s initiative to provide the neurotoxin injection.
She cites a Wall Street Journal article about Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in Northern California, the organization’s largest affiliate, offering Botox to smooth crow’s feet or IV hydration services, including its regular access to birth control, abortions and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
Ms Blackburn said this marks a “significant shift from the organisation’s pretension of being a healthcare charity providing public health services”.
Adopting the new business model is intended to generate revenue and offset a $100 million shortfall resulting from cuts in federal funding, according to Planned Parenthood’s website.
“We are in a world where we are starved of funding and cannot rely on federal dollars for reimbursement,” he says.
Planned Parenthood has faced a financial crisis over the past year, with more than 50 clinics nationwide closing and others consolidating.
Revenue generated from these new services will cover the costs of the organization’s traditional sex and abortion treatments.
Ms. Blackburn said Planned Parenthood appealed to the female beauty market “in an effort to abuse” its nonprofit status after President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill restricted federal Medicaid funding for tax-exempt community abortion providers.
She says the expansion is “not the result of a single dishonest affiliate, but of a top-down expansion and communication effort.”
“These developments not only raise concerns about Planned Parenthood’s growth beyond its original mission statement, but also about the use of its federally supported resources in this expansion,” she wrote in the letter.
Federal cost allocation rules require recipients of federal funds to clearly separate costs associated with federally supported activities from unrelated or nonfederally funded activities. These rules ensure that federal grants are used only for authorized purposes and do not subsidize unrelated commercial services.
Nonprofits can engage in activities unrelated to their charitable mission, but income from those activities may be subject to unrelated business income tax, and Ms. Blackburn said even modest participation in those services could “easily” exceed the $1,000 reporting threshold.
Ms. Blackburn asked the IRS to review whether this use of tax-exempt status to generate new sources of revenue complies with federal requirements for nonprofit funding and grants and respond to her request by Friday.
