March 7, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Internal Revenue Service hired 155 new employees in 2009 for its Exempt Organizations office, bringing the total to 921, according to Nikole Flax, an official in that division.
About 100 of the new employees are working in the tax agency’s examinations office that audits nonprofit groups, Ms. Flax told participants at the annual Washington Non-Profit Legal & Tax Conference. Several new employees are “tax law specialists” in Washington who produce guidance, she said, such as private-letter rulings that are sought by nonprofit groups that need approval of changes to their charitable mission or activities.
Ms. Flax acknowledged that the IRS has heard concern from nonprofit experts about “the retirement of many people within the service who have decades of knowledge.”
“The good news,” she said, is that the IRS “can replace some of the knowledge that we’ve lost.”
