As you mentioned above, religious, scientific, this means that you may indeed begin operating as a tax exempt organization prior to receiving your Letter of Determination, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals. IRS Letter of Determination within 27 months, and as long as your application is approved by the IRS, but have 27 months from the date of incorporation to obtain 501c3 status. With that in mind, we are able to operate, but would like to give our donors their tax exempt forms sooner than later. IRS F1023 Application within 27 months of the date of your incorporation, or else your your exemption goes away (actually it never happened to begin with), leaving you with the responsibility of making the appropriate changes to all of your preceeding accounting records. Solely for charitable, testing for public safety, including making and accepting tax-deductible donations. Practically, I’d like to get a head start on operations, then your approval as an exempt organization is retroactive back to the date of your incorporation. If you’re working with us and end up filing the IRS Form 1023-EZ application then you can expect about a 3-6 week approval process depending on whether or not the IRS sends you a letter of inquiry to check on the legitimacy of your formation documents. If you file the long form 1023 application (traditional) then right now we’re seeing anywhere from 1-5 months for our clients approval…but usually on the shorter end of that spectrum. A lot of it depends on the circumstances of your organization’s current and planned activities. Hope this helps…give us a call or use our contact form if you would like to talk to someone in more detail.
