United States Bowling Congress, are you still knocking ’em down? Still hoping, Hope for Tomorrow? Columbia River Organ Club, do you still play?
If so, you need to let the federal government know right away — or you could lose your federal tax exemption.
Jeanne Kojis, executive director of the Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington, has sent a couple of e-mail blasts to as many of these small nonprofit groups as she has contact information for — but that’s not all of them.
She’s trying to spread the word that IRS rules are changing, and that many of the smallest tax-exempt organizations — which haven’t needed to file taxes, register their status or otherwise stay in touch with the government for years — are up against a May 17 deadline.
All that’s required, for those with annual revenues of less than $25,000, is the filing of a simple “e-postcard” version of IRS form 990-N by May 17. Larger organizations must file a standard 990 or 990-EZ form. To file, visit http://epostcard.form990.org.
Nonprofits that miss the deadline could lose their federal tax-exempt status — meaning they couldn’t accept tax-deductible donations or apply for foundation grants, Kojis said. And re-upping can take a stack of paperwork and cost $750 or more, she said.
“It takes months,” Kojis said. “You don’t want to go through that pain again.”
Especially vulnerable are mom-and-pop charitable operations and volunteer entities with shifting casts of characters, she said.
“Very small groups where records and even the knowledge of what they need to do to comply with the law gets passed along from volunteer to volunteer, they really ought to take a look at the list,” she said. “This thing is not well-known.”
You can visit the list, which was itself compiled by a nonprofit group called The National Center for Charitable Statistics at The Urban Institute, at http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/990search.php. From there, pick Washington and type in Clark County to narrow the search to local groups that may be in jeopardy.
Why a separate nonprofit to post the list? “They take the information from the IRS and pour it into a format acceptable to the public,” Kojis said. “The public really can’t go trolling through the IRS database and expect it to make sense.”
Three-year window
According to information on the IRS’s web site, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 requires that all registered nonprofits have three years to file a “required information form” or automatically lose their tax-exempt status. That three-year window opened in early 2007, and it’s closing now.
It’s part of an IRS effort to cleanse its records of the old and obsolete, Kojis said.
“If your revenues are under $25,000, until this year you didn’t need to report you were still there, and they just kept you on their rolls,” she said. The result: “The IRS has over 1.25 million nonprofits on its rolls, and it doesn’t have any way of knowing if most of them are still in existence. They’re trying to clean up their monitoring system.”
According to the IRS, the 990-N electronic postcard requires only an Employer Identification Number, tax year, a legal name and address, internet address if one exists, name and address of a principal officer and confirmation that revenues are $25,000 or less.
Churches and auxiliaries are exempt.
Kojis said she believes there are more than 7,500 Washington state nonprofits that could be affected by the change in the law, and as many as 190 in Clark County. Some of them, she added, are organizations in name only — obsolete financial structures or kitchen-table clubs and causes that have faded away.
But a scan of the National Center for Charitable Statistics list of nonprofits at risk turns up 17 local 4-H clubs and five Toastmasters clubs; 11 chapters of the International Lutheran Laymens Leagues (all based in Camas); two of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International; and everything from the Association to Humanize Health Care through the Friends of the Vancouver Mounted Police to the Valery P. Chkalov Cultural Exchange Committee.
One group that’s definitely up to date on its federal filings: The Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington. Kojis said the group provides resources, advocacy and professional development for nonprofits and their leaders. Take a look at http://nonprofitnetworkwa.org.
Hundreds of charities, from the large to the tiny, are registered in Clark County, according to the Washington Secretary of State.
