WASHINGTON - May 16, 2010 - Time is running out on the Suspicious Cheese Lords.
The District a cappella group and more than 200,000 other small nonprofit organizations have until midnight Monday to file with the IRS or lose their tax-exempt status under a new law many of them have failed to notice.
For the first time, the law, intended to increase transparency for contributors and more accurately measure nonprofits' billions of dollars in annual activity, requires that those with less than $25,000 in annual revenue file tax forms each year.
Clifton "Skip" West III, president of the Suspicious Cheese Lords and a forensic toxicologist by day, had no idea of the requirement until just the other day. "I was focused on the artistic side," he said.
On Thursday, West saw a re-tweeted warning from a nonprofit association. When he clicked through to the IRS Web site, he realized with a start, "Oh my God . . . we have to do this, now."
The IRS says that more than 600,000 organizations are affected by the law, approved in 2006, and that many have complied. But the Urban Institute estimates that 214,000 public charities are in danger of losing their tax-exempt status Monday, and an additional 126,000 by the end of the year, as filing deadlines linked to various kinds of fiscal years pass.
