Exempt Organizations Advisory - IRS Allows "White Paper" Attachments to Form 990

Suzanne Ross McDowell (smcdowell@steptoe.com)
Catherine W. Wilkinson (cwilkinson@steptoe.com)  
    
On June 16th, BNA reported that the IRS will allow tax-exempt organization Form 990 filers to attach “white papers” to their returns for the 2008 tax year to provide additional explanations of information they consider to be important.  Ron Schultz, senior technical adviser of the Internal Revenue Service’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, is reported to have told the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants National Not-for-Profit Industry conference on June 11th  that charities can provide attachments above and beyond those permitted in the Schedule O supplemental information form.  Schultz stated that the leniency would be allowed for the current year only, given the fact that tax software providers were not able to implement all of the Form 990 changes in time for the 2008 tax year.

According to BNA, Schultz also stated at the conference that, in future years, the IRS will be making changes on financial reporting for organizations that are part of consolidated groups because "the IRS needs to have a better understanding of the different methods for reporting financial statement information because there are a number of different methods out there. The service will be looking to see if there is a way to promote more uniformity and transparency."