Collecting Chinese paintings and sharing them with the public was the stated mission of the organization, which was launched by Bay Area venture capitalists J. Sanford "Sandy" Miller and his then-wife, Vinie Zhang Miller, in 2006. Since then, the couple generated $5.6 million worth of income tax write-offs largely from donating shares of tech companies like Twitter and Snapchat to their private foundation. After a New York Times article in 2015 exposed the limited hours of many private museums, the Senate Finance Committee, under then-chairman Orrin Hatch, launched an investigation. But no meaningful rule changes followed the investigation. And an agency spokesperson highlighted a rule stating that foundations can lose their exempt status if they operate in a manner "materially different" than what they claimed they would do in their initial application. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), inquiring about the delay in approving the application from the couple, who’d given her more than $15,000 over the past few election cycles.

Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney general’s office, stating that it had "discovered a self-dealing event" and including a federal tax return with the word "amended" handwritten at the top. These details emerged in a lawsuit filed by the now-ex-girlfriend, who was permitted to file the suit anonymously, in county court. According to leases filed in the case, the foundation charged her rent, but Xie agreed to pay half of it. An IRS employee wrote that it appeared Strauss and his wife "are using the assets of the Foundation (the guest house gallery) as a facility for housing and displaying a large portion of their personal art collection for their enjoyment and benefit as well as the enjoyment and benefit of invited guests." The employee wanted to know when actual art would be donated, what kind of access the public would have to the gallery, and how the couple planned to inform people that they could visit, among other things.

In 2006, San Diego real estate magnate Matthew Strauss sought a $4 million write-off for the guesthouse that held part of his contemporary art collection. In a December 2019 text message to his girlfriend that was included in the court case, personalized golf tees Xie wrote, "I covered some house part but also try not creat issue related to foundation and tax, believe will make some progress next few months by transfer house out of foundation, may need 2 step by first transfer to other entity." The next month, his foundation transferred the property to an LLC. After the foundation purchased the home, Xie allowed his girlfriend to continue living there; he also stayed there for a time. In 2017, Xie’s foundation (whose sole officers are Xie and his brother) spent $3 million to purchase a home in Cupertino, California, from his new girlfriend while he was going through an acrimonious divorce. This, he explained, preserves the home for those who "really want to see it." Indeed, exclusivity and rarefied taste were a theme of the tour, which included tales of the exacting specifications of Harriett Carolan, the Pullman heiress, a Francophile who imported an entire salon that had been built in France on the eve of the revolution.

Vinie Miller said the plan was "hypothetical" and that the foundation held the home as an investment instead. "A private museum is usually by appointment only," Vinie Miller said when asked about the out-of-the-way location. When the couple cashed in the foundation’s stock to buy a potential museum space for the art in 2017, they opted against a high-traffic location where lots of people could easily access it. The museum that was purchased with the foundation’s tax-exempt funds never actually opened. The foundation’s website doesn’t list an address or hours of operation. That’s at odds with the foundation’s publicly available tax returns, which have listed the property as being used for charitable purposes. In his email to ProPublica, Finwall said that, after amending its returns, the foundation "paid some excise taxes related to Mr. Xie’s stay at the property." Finwall also said that Xie had planned to file the amended returns months earlier but didn’t do so because his accountant mailed the IRS forms to Xie at an outdated address. The statement cited a compliance program that "focuses on high-risk issues" among tax-exempt organizations, and it asserted that the program "deploys the right resources to address noncompliance issues." The IRS also pointed to a recent tax court case that it won against a foundation that, among other things, kept a collection of African artifacts in a basement with no public access.