Right now I am sitting on hold with the IRS. No there is nothing wrong with my family. I am trying to deal with something else.
I am the treasurer of a small 501c3 called the Arizona section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. We are a group that meets a couple times a year. Teachers from around AZ get together and talk physics, and teaching, and sometimes other things as well. I have a meeting tomorrow in fact and I may write about it next week.
Anyways, our organization used to be a non-profit decades ago, but the treasurer at the time never filed any yearly paperwork and as a result it lost its non-profit status. Of course he never knew this. He thought it was a one and done thing. Oh no, you have to do paperwork with the state and federal government and pay the state every year to keep that status.
So, when I found this out after many years of becoming the treasurer I decided to figure out how to become a 501c3 once again. Well, it is a long process and a pricey process. So, it got put off for a few years. Well, last year, 2022, I finally decided to sit down and tackle the paperwork. I did everything with the state and federal level and got it all submitted. It took a while, but it was done.
A few months later I got all the approval paperwork, and I thought we were good to go. Then I needed to file yearly paperwork for the organization. The state one was no issue at all. But when I tried to take for of the federal paperwork I got an error. So I contacted the IRS and found out that I had checked a box incorrectly and the organization got classified as a private charity rather than a public charity. The person on the phone at that time told me it happens all the time (she said she helps at least 3-4 organizations a week with the exact issue). Then she told me I had to basically resubmit paperwork at the full cost again (bummer there, and if it happens all the time maybe that means the paperwork is flawed and some grace could be shown on the re-filing cost and hey get the paperwork fixed).
They told me it could take up to 6 months for the paperwork to get redone. Ok no issues. I got it back in less than 6 months, and all was fixed – YEAH!
So, a couple weeks ago I decided to try and submit our 990-N, BUT the IRS system stated that AzAAPT was still a private charity. WHAT?
So that leads me to right now. I just hung up with the IRS. The very nice woman I was on the phone with looked up the account and for some reason the switch didn’t fully process through all the systems it needed to so I could file the right form. So, she spent some time fixing it. After 30 minutes on the phone (mostly on hold) with the IRS she said it is all taken care of. She did say I had to wait 4 weeks to try filling out the 990-N again because it can take up to that long to fully guarantee that the update was in every system. So I will try again around the beginning of November.
I will say that both people I have had to talk to at the IRS were both very pleasant and helpful. I am thankful for those kinds of people.