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Conference Notebook

June 02, 2008

Nonprofit Congress
Why Charities Should Be Planning for New Form 990

Nonprofit groups do not need to begin filing the Internal Revenue Service’s new Form 990 until next year.

But groups should already be making decisions about their operations in preparation for the new informational tax document, tax experts said today at the Nonprofit Congress’ meeting in Washington.

The new document includes a laundry list of questions about governance issues such as whether organizations have a whistleblower policy, whether they are keeping written records of their board meetings, and what policies they use for setting compensation of key employees.

To answer these questions properly, charities should make sure they are setting the appropriate policies now.

If an organization wants to be able to say that it is documenting its meetings, for example, it needs to begin documenting its meetings this year to be able to answer “yes” on the form, says Julie Floch, an accountant who handles nonprofit clients.

“When your year is over, you can’t go backward and contemporaneously document your meetings,” Ms. Floch says.

In the same session, Ron Schultz, an official in the IRS’ tax-exempt division, said the tax agency is reviewing comments on a proposed set of instructions for the form and expects to have a final version of the instructions by November.

— Peter Panepento

Monday June 2, 2008 | Permalink

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