October 31, 2002 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Internal Revenue Service is giving its agents new suggestions on how to handle a range of issues important to charities that may arise in government audits or other work.
The advice appears in the latest version of the revenue service’s “technical instruction” handbook. The publication is intended solely to train IRS workers, but charity officials and their lawyers find the guide useful because they can see how the agency views complicated aspects of tax law.
Among the topics discussed by the IRS in its latest handbook: requirements of the Form 990 federal informational tax return; classification of organizations as charities or private foundations; statutes covering disaster-relief groups working in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks; laws and rules affecting charitable trusts; the ins and outs of partnerships formed between tax-exempt groups and private investors for housing projects for low-income people; and “key issues” in regulations governing federal tax policy for charities that pay unusually high salaries to their top officials.
Copies of the IRS handbook, Exempt Organizations Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Technical Instruction Program for Fiscal Year 2003, may be obtained free from the IRS Web site at http://www.irs.gov/eo.
