Jen: This is The PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski and I’m back again with Emily Smikal, a tax director and one of the faces of the PKF Texas not-for-profit team. Emily, welcome back to the Playbook.

Emily: Thanks, glad to be here again.

Jen: People think not-for-profits they think, “oh they don’t pay taxes, do they have to fill out forms?” I suspect the answer is yes, so, what type of tax forms do not-for-profit organizations have to fill out?

Emily: Your suspicion is correct. So, there’s a handful of different types of forms, so it is important to understand the differences and which form your organization may be required to file. So, let’s talk about first a few different versions of the Form 990. We’ll start with the 990-N because that’s the easiest, the less burdensome one, and we call that the postcard and that’s because it’s very short, it just asks a few questions.

Jen: Like a little postcard.

Emily: Exactly. And organizations that have $50,000 or less in annual revenue are allowed to use the 990-N.

Jen: OK, and so you said multiple types of the 990, what other 990s are there?

Emily: So, the next one up is for 990-EZ and that’s called the short form. Organizations with gross receipts less than 200,000 and total annual assets at the end of the year of less than 500,000 are allowed to use the 990-EZ. Then there’s the Form 990, so any organization that surpasses those thresholds of the 200,000 revenue and the 500,000 total assets, they file the long form, form 990.

Jen: Every not-for-profit organization will fill out at least one of these three forms, correct?

Emily: So, there’s one more option, actually, and that’s for a private foundation. So, if an organization is a private foundation, they’re going to file Form 990-PF regardless of their amount of activity.

Jen: Is it something where they would potentially file both the regular 990 and the PF?

Emily: No. So, if their private foundation they only file a PF, if they are not a private foundation they will fill one of those other three options.

Jen: Are there any other forms?

Emily: There’s one more I’d like to mention, and that’s a Form 990-T. So, if an organization has $1000 or more of unrelated business income which we’ve talked in more detail in other videos, then they have to also file a Form 990-T to report that. So, all the other forms that I mentioned earlier are required to be filed annually in order to keep up their good status with the IRS, but the Form 990-T is only required if it meets the threshold of the $1000 for that year.

Jen: Perfect and it sounds like we could probably help them figure out which form they need to fill out.

Emily: Absolutely, that’s what we’re here to help with anytime you’re questioning which approach to take, we’ll help you walk through that.

Jen: Sounds good. Well, we’ll get you back to talk a little bit more about tax stuff for not-for-profit, sound good?

Emily: Sounds great, thank you.

Jen: This has been another thought leadership production brought to you by PKF Texas – The Entrepreneurs Playbook. For more information about this topic visit www.pkftexas.com/notforprofit. Tune in next week for another chapter.