The lack of influence of Internal Revenue Service charity regulators within the tax agency's bureaucracy hurts the quality of their work, says Marc Owens, a Washington lawyer who used to manage the IRS's nonprofit branch.
For example, when Exempt Organization division officials wanted to redesign the Form 990 informational tax return a couple of years ago, they said they had to move quickly because they were given limited time and access to IRS computer programmers who helped produce the forms, Mr. Owens notes. Charities are now using those forms, which affect the 2008 tax year.
"This 2008 return had to be rushed through because they had a limited window of opportunity," he says.
Officials who oversee the charity division of the tax agency "didn't have the time to think it through because they had an artificial time constraint that itself is a reflection of their secondary role within the IRS organization," he says.
The result is a revamped Form 990 that does not respond to "the needs of the nonprofit sector for an easily understood document, so that the sector could report accurately and completely," says Mr. Owens.
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