Tax-Exempt Organizations Registered With the IRS

August 9, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes

More than 770,000 charities and private foundations were registered with the Internal Revenue Service as of September 30, 1999, according to figures just released by the tax agency.

ALSO SEE:

A Breakdown of Tax-Exempt Categories

The number of groups classified under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code rose by 40,144, or 5.5 percent, from 1998 to 1999, the I.R.S. reported.

In 1999, 773,934 organizations, including 77,287 private foundations, were registered with the federal government, compared with 733,790 in 1998.

The number of private foundations grew by 26 percent from 1998 to 1999, up from 61,185 in 1998, the revenue service said.

The growth in the number of charitable organizations has been fairly consistent in recent years. They increased by 6 percent from 1997 to 1998, 5.9 percent from 1996 to 1997, and 4.5 percent from 1995 to 1996.

The I.R.S. 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 gone out of business.

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 40,961, or 3 percent, from 1998 to 1999.

The statistics will be published in the 1999 edition of the Internal Revenue Service’s Data Book.

The chart below shows the number of organizations registered under each subcategory of Section 501(c) in 1998 and 1999, as well as the number of applications approved and denied in 1999 by the Internal Revenue Service’s field offices.

	Applications				Organizations registered
	Approved	Denied	Other ¹	Total	1998	1999
Section 501(c):
(1) Corporations organized under act of Congress	0	0	0	0	14	18
(2) Titleholding corporations	177	0	40	217	7,125	7,042
(3) Religious, charitable, etc.	52,773	447	11,838	65,058	733,790 ²	773,934 ²
(4) Social welfare	1,500	4	539	2,043	139,533	138,927
(5) Labor, agriculture organizations	333	0	77	410	64,804	63,716
(6) Business leagues	1,635	10	284	1,929	79,864	81,493
(7) Social and recreation clubs	868	7	536	1,411	66,691	67,044
(8) Fraternal beneficiary societies	12	1	18	31	84,507	84,519
(9) Voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations	387	0	63	450	14,240	13,886
(10) Domestic fraternal beneficiary societies	24	0	35	59	21,962	22,802
(11) Teachers’ retirement funds	0	0	2	2	13	14
(12) Benevolent life-insurance associations	93	0	28	121	6,423	6,462
(13) Cemetery companies	203	1	36	240	9,792	9,963
(14) State-chartered credit unions	1	0	0	1	4,378	4,408
(15) Mutual-insurance companies	0	0	7	7	1,251	1,296
(16) Corporations to finance crop operations	0	0	0	0	25	23
(17) Supplemental unemployment benefit trusts	5	0	6	11	533	518
(18) Employee-funded pension trusts	1	0	0	1	1	2
(19) War-veterans’ organizations	125	0	36	161	35,682	35,428
(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.	1	0	8	9	1,017	1,107
(26) State-sponsored high-risk health-insurance organizations	0	0	0	0	7	9
(27) State-sponsored workers’ compensation reinsurance organizations	0	0	0	0	3	5
Total	58,138	470	13,553	72,161	1,271,686	1,312,647
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 application 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 exemption unless they desire a ruling.
SOURCE: Internal Revenue Service