As I reminded you over the weekend, the deadline for filing federal information returns (the 990 series) for most charitable organizations is tomorrow, May 15.
So this morning, bright and early, I headed over the site and got an error.
And again.
And again.
The system is down… Of course, it is.
The site is never dependable, something that I’ve been complaining about on behalf of clients and other non-profit organizations since 2010.
If the IRS is going to require that small non-profit organizations file electronically, don’t you think there should be some sort of system to make sure, er, that the site actually works?
It’s worth noting that the site (which as I’ve pointed out before, looks like a high school computer project) is not maintained by IRS. It is maintained by The Urban Institute which has as its mission:
the Urban Institute gathers data, conducts research, evaluates programs, offers technical assistance overseas, and educates Americans on social and economic issues — to foster sound public policy and effective government.
I happen to be a fan of much of what the Urban Institute does… but tech-savvy? Not so much.
Filing the e-postcard is supposed to be free (for organizations which receive less than $100,000 annually) and easy. It’s free, true, but the easy is disputable. My fellow tax pros – and officers from nonprofit organizations – have contacted me over the past two years complaining about all kinds of errors and glitches filing the form 990-N. Most of the complaints have been about the speed of the site (sloooooow) or not being able to log on. But some of the errors were quite serious: the system spits out the wrong fiscal year or did not recognize the organization at all. Even worse? In those cases, the IRS has not been able to fix the problems directly because their records (as updated by the Urban Institute) do not reflect the proper filing status. It’s an inter-agency problem and one that has yet to be resolved.
I realize that this new system has only been up for a couple of years. For the IRS, that’s nothing. But in today’s tech world – when Apple can introduce new operating systems practically overnight and Droid can offer up new apps nearly instantaneously – I can’t understand two years’ worth of error messages. Meanwhile, those that are paying the price for these errors are those that can afford to do it the least: non-profit organizations with less than $100,000 in donations. The irony here would be delicious if not so tragic.
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