Interesting — we received a letter from the IRS informing us that we had not filed a required form. As it turns out, we may not be required to file the form at all, and the one form we knew we did need to file isn’t due till March 15th anyway, but here is the complete letter and form, filled out as it will be returned to the IRS, along with the original EIN notice they sent us. This reply isn’t due until Dec 28th, but I’m going to send it off today, just to be on the safe side — no sense putting it off and possibly forgetting about it! Comments, questions?
For the record, it was Laura Westenhiser who originally applied for the EIN on our behalf.
Cheers,
~~Cheryl
I’m with Occupy Wilmington, NC & we are arguing about whether we need to be a non-profit or not. How do y’all handle donations? Why did you need an EIN number in the first place. Any help you can give would be so helpful because this money handling issue is not helping the group.
Regardless of feeling about status, this was beautifully reported. Thank you.
Good question, Roberta. It was a tough nut for us to crack, too. Nonprofit status not only takes a long time to get, but you also need a board of directors, which is kind of anathema to our movement.
We knew we needed a bank account, because keeping cash at Occupation Park was out of the question, and we didn’t want to keep it in the safe of the Methodist Church that had kindly offered to do that for us, either. Some people were uncomfortable having the church hold our money, and it was too problematic trying to account for it and get to it when it was needed, too. Plus, we wanted to accept donations online (through WePay), and the only easy way to get money out of that account is a direct bank transfer.
In order to set up a bank account, the organization needs a tax ID number. If you set it up using an individual’s SSN, not only do you risk having that person leave and take all the money, but also, that person must report all deposits as personal income. Nobody wanted to do that, of course.
The tax ID numbers as listed on IRS.gov are:
* Social Security Number “SSN”
* Employer Identification Number “EIN”
* Individual Taxpayer Identification Number “ITIN”
* Taxpayer Identification Number for Pending U.S. Adoptions “ATIN”
* Preparer Taxpayer Identification Number “PTIN”
Obviously, the only one of those that even came close to describing us is an EIN. I’m still not sure what information was submitted to the IRS because it was done online. But the confirmation letter eventually came by mail (highly recommend you use a USPS-recognized delivery point as an address for this — we had used the park, and by rights the post office should have returned it as undeliverable, but I guess the carrier was feeling generous that day). This EIN doesn’t give us nonprofit status, so if people want to make a large donation and write it off, they have to write it to the First United Methodist church or any other nonprofit organization that’ll agree to turn around and cut us a check in the amount of the donation.
It’s a little complicated, but this was the best we could do under the circumstances. The world has never seen an organization like this movement, so fitting us into its system gets a little tricky sometimes!
We all owe a debt of gratitude for you. Your followup is admirable. It’s important to keep this process as transparent as you have been doing.
Kudos to you.
Regards,
Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
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