re: #33 A Mom Anon

All advise given above is valid, but I’ll add a couple of things (since I did some serious research into setting up a tax exempt in Georgia not so long ago.)

tl;dr is get an attorney and an accountant, both with experience in tax exempt organizations, involved in your process. And keep complete, total records of EVERYTHING for the first few years. Even if your two advisors say you don’t need it, keep it anyway just in case. (Laws change, and even experts make mistakes.)

Broad outline: you have to register your corporation with Georgia and inform the Secretary of State you intend it to be a tax exempt organization. You then have to send the right form plus the documentation of your state registration to the IRS. When the IRS sends certification back to you, you will have to send a copy to the Secretary of State (even though they will have received it) AND you’ll have a small set of paperwork that goes to the department of Revenue. (You’ll get that from the Secretary of State in a surprise package.)

Notice that this creates a window during which you (probably) /will be/ tax exempt but aren’t, yet. If your organization counts as “charitable” (not all tax exempts do, but yours looks like it will), then many donations received in that time can be retroactively given tax exempt (charitable donation) status. You really, really need a tax accountant on hand to go through this with you. You’re going to need to send confirmations of receipt of donations, and you’re going to need to list qualifying donors and donations on the 990 (If you don’t qualify for the short form 990).

If you’re requesting donations and you’re going to do it from places other than Georgia you’re going to need to file paperwork with the other states. If you’ve got a ‘donate online’ button on a website the whole thing is mixed and more than I want to go into right here. Basically some states say you have to register, others don’t, and it can wind up costing you a couple thousand dollars to cover nation-wide. Again, talk to the experts.

You can expect to have to send copies of almost everything to some government organization for the first few of years. It won’t officially be an audit, but it might as well be such. The sad thing is that most of this won’t be examined, or if it is it’ll be cursory. Simply a matter of too much to do, too few people to do it. But if you do NOT send it in, it raises flags in the automated software and suddenly you become a priority for those few people. Whether luck of the draw or by flag, if you’re audited they’ll want not just financial but behavioral records to confirm you’re fulfilling the public benefit you claim. Which means those letters you got from people that both the attorney and the accountant said weren’t necessary suddenly become critical and you shouldn’t have thrown them away.

In other words do not throw anything away. File it. Save it. Consider a computerized record management system. (Talk to a pro because there are requirements for such to meet legal standards - “it’s a true copy of the original”.)

And the funny thing is that as long as you’re small all of this turns out to be relatively minimal. It sounds huge, but it isn’t. Just use the experts, keep all the records, and you will have plenty of time to go and do Good Things.