By Hunter                                       H.B. No. 2680

      75R9085 T                           

                                A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

 1-1                                   AN ACT

 1-2     relating to property tax exemptions for charitable organizations.

 1-3           BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:

 1-4           SECTION 1.  Section 11.18, Tax Code, is amended to read as

 1-5     follows:

 1-6           (d)  A charitable organization must be organized exclusively

 1-7     to perform religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or

 1-8     educational purposes and, except as permitted by Subsection (h) of

 1-9     this section, engage exclusively in performing one or more of the

1-10     following charitable functions:

1-11                 (1)  providing medical care or elderly housing with

1-12     services without regard to the beneficiaries' ability to pay, which

1-13     in the case of a nonprofit hospital, [or] hospital system, or

1-14     retirement community or nursing home, means providing charity care

1-15     and community benefits as set forth in Paragraph (A), (B), (C),

1-16     (D), (E), (F), (G), [or] (H), or (I):

1-17                       (B)  charity care and government-sponsored

1-18     indigent health care are provided in an amount equal to at least

1-19     four percent of the hospital's, [or] hospital system's, retirement

1-20     community's, or nursing home's net patient or net resident revenue;

1-21                       (I)  retirement communities must provide

1-22     independent elderly housing, Assisted Living and Nursing services

1-23     on a single campus either without regard to residents' ability to

1-24     pay or equal to at least four percent of the Community combined net

 2-1     resident revenue.

 2-2           SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the

 2-3     crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an

 2-4     emergency and an imperative public necessity that the

 2-5     constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several

 2-6     days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,

 2-7     and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its

 2-8     passage, and it is so enacted.