Filing complete and accurate 990s is important because these forms are the principal source of statistical information about America's nonprofits, such as those published by the National Center for Charitable Statistics (see http://nccs.urban.org/). Under rules adopted in 1999, too, nonprofits are required to give copies of their 990s to anyone who ask for them, which means that clear presentation of activities and finances are now more important than ever. Full information about these new rules was included in an earlier Internet Nonprofit Center Bulletin -- see http://www.nonprofits.org/bulletins/990508.html Increasingly as well copies of some 990s are being posted on the World-Wide Web by others; many state charities regulators will post the forms for charities that are registered with them and Philanthropic Research has started to post full copies of many recent 990s at http://www.guidestar.org/.

The 1999 regulations discussed in the earlier Bulletin do not require private foundations to follow the same procedures. The Treasury has published draft regulations to set up a similar process for foundations. The draft of the regulations can be read at the Federal Register website at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=1999_register&docid=fr10au99-27. These new regulations will take effect 60 days after final regulations are issued. As with the regulations for other nonprofits, though, there's nothing to stop foundations from following the procedures even before the final regulations are adopted.

Early in December, the IRS implemented a reorganization of its offices that work with nonprofits. The new division is called Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) and replaces the familiar EP/EO (Employee Plans/Exempt Organizations) division. There are found operating parts: Employee Plan, Exempt Organizations, Government Entities and Customer Account Services. Exempt Organizations will deal with oversight of all 501s and 527s (political organizations) but will not handle tax-exempt bonds, which are now to be handled by Government Entities. Customer Account Services will process returns, deal with updates and corrections to records, and handle similar administrative tasks. Thanks to KPMG and the "Exotax Notes" they publish for this update. More details of the reorganization can be found at http://www.kpmg.com/ in the Exempt Organizations pages under Products and Services.

There is now a new way to receive an announcement when new bulletins are published. Simply subscribe to the INC.bulletin mailing list hosted for us by the Gilbert Center (publishers of Nonprofit Online News). To do so, send email to autoshare@gilbert.org and put "subscribe inc.bulletin" in the message of your email (without the quote marks, and note that the name of the list is inc-dot-bulletin, not inc-dash-bulletin). This list will only be used for sending announcements about the Internet Nonprofit Center, and the email addresses in the list will never be used by anyone for any other purpose.

Best wishes for 2000,

Putnam Barber, Editor