Tax-Exempt Organizations Registered With the IRS

April 17, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes

More than 900,000 charities and private foundations were registered with the Internal Revenue Service as of September 30, 2002, according to figures just released by the tax agency. That is a 76-percent increase in the number of charities in a decade. In 1992, 516,554 charitable organizations were registered with the IRS.

The growth in recent years has been fairly consistent.

In 2002, 909,574 charitable organizations, including 93,853 private foundations, were registered with the federal government, compared with 865,096 in 2001.

The number of groups classified under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code rose by 44,478, or 5.1 percent, from 2001 to 2002, the revenue service reported. The number increased by 5.6 percent from 2000 to 2001, 5.8 percent from 1999 to 2000, and 5.5 percent from 1998 to 1999. The number of private foundations grew by 6 percent from 2001 to 2002, up 5,344 from 2001, the revenue service said.

The IRS has acknowledged that an unknown number of the organizations classified under Section 501(c)(3) are still on the government’s books even though they have shut down.

The revenue service’s statistics show that the total number of tax-exempt organizations classified under all of Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code rose by 45,347, or 3.2 percent, from 2001 to 2002.

The statistics were published in the 2002 edition of the Internal Revenue Service’s Data Book, which is available online at http://www.irs.gov.

The chart below shows the number of groups registered under each category of Section 501(c) in 2001 and 2002, as well as the number of tax-exemption applications approved and denied in 2002 by the IRS.

	Approved	Denied	Other ¹	Total	2001	2002
Section 501(c):
(1) Corporations organized under act of Congress	20	0	4	24	48	88
(2) Titleholding corporations	153	0	53	206	6,984	6,998
(3) Religious, charitable, etc.	64,188	531	14,660	79,379	865,096²	909,574²
(4) Social-welfare organizations	1,699	10	695	2,404	136,882	137,526
(5) Labor, agriculture organizations	299	1	67	367	62,944	62,246
(6) Business leagues	1,758	13	324	2,095	82,706	83,712
(7) Social and recreation clubs	952	2	483	1,437	67,289	68,175
(8) Fraternal beneficiary societies	25	0	15	40	81,112	80,193
(9) Voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations	246	0	59	305	13,292	13,173
(10) Domestic fraternal beneficiary societies	41	0	23	64	23,531	23,096
(11) Teachers’ retirement funds	1	0	0	1	15	15
(12) Benevolent life-insurance associations	102	0	36	138	6,500	6,553
(13) Cemetery companies	203	0	21	224	10,269	10,424
(14) State-chartered credit unions	20	0	4	24	4,409	4,471
(15) Mutual-insurance companies	178	0	21	199	1,423	1,608
(16) Corporations to finance crop operations	0	0	0	0	23	24
(17) Supplemental unemployment benefit trusts	1	0	0	1	490	477
(18) Employee-funded pension trusts	0	0	0	0	1	1
(19) War veterans’ organizations	153	0	42	195	35,263	35,227
(21) Black-lung trusts	0	0	0	0	28	28
(22) Multi-employer pension plans	0	0	0	0	0	0
(23) Veterans’ associations founded prior to 1880	0	0	0	0	2	2
(24) Trusts described in section 4049 of ERISA	0	0	0	0	1	1
(25) Holding companies for pensions, etc.	144	0	17	161	1,236	1,274
(26) State-sponsored high-risk health-insurance organizations	0	0	0	0	9	9
(27) State-sponsored workers’ compensation reinsurance organizations	1	0	0	1	5	10
Total	70,184	557	16,524	87,265	1,399,558	1,444,905
Note: Section 501(c)(20), which was formerly used to classify legal-service organizations, has been abolished. 1. Includes cases in which organizations withdrew the applications or failed to furnish required information. 2. All Section 501(c)(3) organizations are not included because certain organizations (such as churches, integrated auxiliaries, subordinate units, and conventions or associations of churches) need not apply for recognition of tax exemption unless they desire a ruling.
SOURCE: Internal Revenue Service