Nonprofits may lose tax-exempt status

Many at risk of missing deadline for filing new form with IRS

By MOLLY HOTTLE

updated 6:49 p.m. ET, Sat., May 15, 2010

DES MOINES, Iowa - More than 200,000 small nonprofits across the nation are days away from losing their tax-exempt status because they haven't filed a new form with the Internal Revenue Service.

Many of these groups already operate on razor-thin budgets and some worry an unexpected tax bill could force organizations to close.

"The nonprofits in your backyards, some of them are going to be gone," said Suzanne Coffman, a spokeswoman for GuideStar, which tracks data on nonprofits.

It's most likely the nonprofits aren't aware of the Monday deadline that only applies to groups that report $25,000 or less in income, excluding churches. Those organizations may not find out until Jan. 1, 2011, when they're notified they have to pay taxes on donations they thought were exempt. And it could be months before their nonprofit status is restored.

Read more Here.

The deadline is today.

I read in the article that they attempted to do an outreach to contact as many organizations as possible, so hopefully anyone that was not aware of this was forewarned.

Anyone that made contributions will be able to claim the deduction only until January of next year, so be sure to check who you make donations too, and their status.

If you happen to have an automatic payroll deduction for a charity, please check into that as well.

This is quite an important story in my opinion, good catch OP! I find it interesting that nobody else has posted on this. Even myself, a socialist, would rail against this as discriminatory and possibly even a conspiracy by the IRS in order to increase tax income by hurting non-profits.

These are the real problems in my opinion, where is the outrage?

UPDATE
Some nonprofits may lose tax-exempt status
Information needs to be filed with IRS
By Stephen Largen • [email protected] • May 19, 2010



www.thenewsstar.com...

The NCCS, which maintains data on the nonprofit sector in the United States in collaboration with the IRS and other government organizations, reported that as many as 365,000 small nonprofits nationwide are in danger of losing their tax-exempt status after Monday's deadline.
But the IRS released a statement late Tuesday afternoon from Commissioner Doug Shulman giving nonprofits who missed the filing deadline a reprieve.
"The IRS has conducted an unprecedented outreach effort in the tax-exempt sector on the 2006 law's new filing requirements, but many of these smaller organizations are just now learning of the May 17 deadline," Shulman said in the statement.
"I want to reassure these small organizations that the IRS will do what it can to help them avoid losing their tax-exempt status."

That is a lot of nonprofits that stand to lose their status, although they did say some have been inactive for quite a while.

I am interested to see what the IRS means by being willing to do anything to help. A deadline is a deadline, afterall.

Will be interesting to follow and see if there are any noticeable ramifications from this, especially once some start having to shut down out of necessity.