The House Ways and Means Committee passed the Foreign Funding Transparency Act on a 23, 18 vote, aiming to close a gap that lets tax-exempt groups accept foreign money without telling the IRS, a move that came as investigators zeroed in on one Shanghai-based American tech millionaire's sprawling nonprofit network.
Chairman Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, framed the bill as a direct response to what his committee found during a months-long probe of the tax-exempt sector. The legislation would require nonprofits to collect and report to the IRS every donation they receive from foreign nationals, a basic disclosure step that, remarkably, current law does not mandate. The committee named Neville Roy Singham in its statement announcing the bill's passage, singling out the 72-year-old as a case study in how foreign-linked money moves through American nonprofits unchecked.
Singham sold his tech company for $785 million in 2017. He now lives in Shanghai. A Fox News Digital investigation found he has funneled $278 million into a broad network of nonprofits since that sale. The committee's decision to name him publicly signals that its probe has moved well past the preliminary stage.
Smith did not hold back about what his committee uncovered. In a statement tied to the bill's passage, he laid out the core problem in plain terms.
"As the Ways and Means Committee conducted its investigation into the nation's tax-exempt sector, it became clear that shadowy networks of well-funded organizations have been enjoying lucrative tax benefits for decades, while simultaneously accepting donations and direction from foreign nationals."
That line, "donations and direction", carries weight. Smith was not merely describing foreign cash flowing in. He was describing foreign influence flowing alongside it, shaping the work these groups do on American soil.
He went further, drawing a distinction between what the public sees and what the money trail reveals.
"From the outside, it looks like a movement, but once you see how the money flows, it becomes clear that this is a machine."
Smith also took aim at the downstream political consequences, stating that foreign donations have been funneled through tax-exempt organizations to political committees. Under current rules, that pipeline operates with minimal disclosure. The Foreign Funding Transparency Act would revise reporting requirements to force those transactions into the open.
The 23, 18 vote split along party lines, a pattern that has defined recent legislative battles in Congress where oversight measures face unified Democratic opposition. Every "no" vote effectively defended the status quo, a system in which foreign nationals can donate to American nonprofits without the IRS ever knowing.
Singham's story reads like a case built for exactly this kind of legislation. After pocketing $785 million from the sale of his tech company, he relocated to Shanghai and began pouring money into a web of American nonprofits. Fox News Digital's investigation traced $278 million flowing from Singham into that network since 2017.
The committee's linked headline referenced subpoenas issued to three nonprofits as part of its probe, though the names of those organizations were not disclosed in the article body. Singham did not respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
The arrangement raises an obvious question: why would a 72-year-old American living in China channel hundreds of millions of dollars into U.S. nonprofits? Smith's committee appears to believe the answer involves more than philanthropy. The bill's requirement that nonprofits disclose foreign donations to the IRS would, at minimum, give federal authorities a paper trail they currently lack.
That gap in oversight has allowed organizations to enjoy tax-exempt status, and the public trust that comes with it, while accepting money and, according to Smith, direction from foreign nationals. For decades, apparently, with no one checking the books. The growing fractures within the Democratic coalition make the party's unified opposition to this transparency measure all the more conspicuous.
The committee vote did not happen in a vacuum. About a week before the bill passed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed representatives from more than 60 countries at a summit in Washington. His subject: the threat of extremist violence from the political left, and the international networks that finance and coordinate it.
"For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot, a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left."
Rubio went on to challenge what he described as a refusal to take the threat seriously.
"Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy."
Rubio did not name specific organizations or individuals during his address. But he described networks coordinating across multiple countries, providing training instructions, and using encrypted communication to facilitate unrest. He said international cooperation was critical to disrupting the financing of dangerous organizations, some of which he described as working with hostile foreign states.
The timing matters. Rubio's summit laid out the national-security case for tracking foreign money flowing into politically active groups. Smith's committee, one week later, passed legislation designed to do exactly that. Whether the two efforts were coordinated or simply converged on the same problem, they point in the same direction: foreign cash is moving through American nonprofits, and the federal government has been willfully unequipped to track it.
Congressional efforts to close accountability gaps in federal oversight have picked up momentum across multiple committees this session. The Foreign Funding Transparency Act fits squarely into that pattern, a straightforward disclosure requirement that should not be controversial but somehow is.
Strip away the political noise and the bill asks nonprofits to do something remarkably basic: tell the IRS when a foreign national sends them money. That is it. No ban on foreign donations. No revocation of tax-exempt status. Just disclosure.
Smith put the stakes plainly: "Foreign donations have no place in American politics, particularly when the sole goal is to manipulate our public discourse, promote propaganda and support violence." Whether every foreign donation to a nonprofit carries that intent is debatable. Whether the IRS should at least know those donations exist is not.
The bill still needs to clear the full House and the Senate. Given the party-line committee vote, it will face opposition. Democrats who voted against it will need to explain why they prefer a system in which foreign money enters the American nonprofit sector with no federal paper trail. That is a difficult position to defend to voters who expect their tax-exempt institutions to serve American interests, not foreign ones.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have shown a willingness to maneuver on national-security-adjacent issues when the political math favors it. Whether foreign nonprofit funding triggers the same calculation remains to be seen.
The Singham investigation will continue regardless of the bill's fate. The subpoenas are out. The committee has named names. And $278 million does not move through a nonprofit network without leaving a trail, even if, until now, nobody in government was required to follow it.
When a country cannot tell its own tax agency where its nonprofits get their money, it is not protecting free speech. It is protecting a loophole, and the people who profit from it.
