What is form 990 and what does a treasurer do

Last updated 2026-07-24

what is form 990?

Form 990 is the informational tax return that tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS every year instead of a regular income tax return. Nonprofits don't pay income tax on money raised for their exempt purpose, but the IRS still wants to see where the money came from and where it went. That's what the 990 series does. The IRS describes it plainly: "Tax-exempt organizations, nonexempt charitable trusts, and section 527 political organizations file Form 990 to provide the IRS with the information required by section 6033" ^[1]. In plain English, it's the public accountability document for a nonprofit. Donors, state charity regulators, and watchdog sites like GuideStar/Candid all pull from it. There isn't just one 990. There are four versions, and which one your booster club or PTO files depends almost entirely on money: how much you brought in (gross receipts) and how much you're sitting on (total assets) at year end. Get the version wrong, or skip filing three years running, and the consequences are real: automatic loss of tax-exempt status ^[2]. More on that below. If you want a plain breakdown of thresholds and deadlines, see our 990 tax form guide and the irs form 990 overview.

what is the 990 tax form, exactly, and why does a small booster club need to file one?

Even a tiny booster club with $6,000 in the bank has to file something with the IRS every year, once it has 501(c)(3) or other tax-exempt status. The "something" is a version of the 990. Skipping it isn't a paperwork shortcut, it's the single most common way small nonprofits accidentally lose their exemption. Here's the logic: the IRS granted your group exemption from federal income tax based on a promise that you're organized and operated for exempt purposes (charitable, educational, whatever your bylaws say). The 990 is how the IRS checks that promise gets kept every year, without auditing every nonprofit individually. No filing, no check-in, no continued exemption. The form also becomes public. Anyone, a parent, a rival club, a journalist, can look up your group's 990 through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool ^[3] or on Candid's GuideStar. That's part of the deal. Tax-exempt status is a privilege, and transparency is the price. For most volunteer-run booster clubs and PTOs, the actual filing is not hard once you know which version applies and you've kept decent records all year. The hard part is usually catching up after a few years of nobody doing it.

which 990 do we file? (990-N vs 990-EZ vs 990 vs 990-PF)

Gross receipts normally $50,000 or less	Form 990-N (e-Postcard)
Gross receipts under $200,000 AND total assets under $500,000	Form 990-EZ (or full 990)
Gross receipts $200,000 or more OR total assets $500,000 or more	Form 990
Private foundations (regardless of size)	Form 990-PF	Most booster clubs and PTOs, especially ones running concession stands, small raffles, and car washes, land in the 990-N or 990-EZ range. The 990-N is genuinely simple: eight pieces of information filed online through the IRS's e-Postcard system [5], no software needed, no schedules. If you're not sure which one applies, our 990n and form-990-n pages walk through the exact thresholds and the online filing steps. One wrinkle worth knowing: "gross receipts" means total money that came in before subtracting expenses, not net profit. A club that grossed $52,000 from a golf tournament but only netted $9,000 after costs still has to look at the $52,000 figure for threshold purposes. Treasurers who eyeball their bank balance and assume they're under $50,000 sometimes get this wrong.

The version you file depends on gross receipts and total assets, checked at the end of your fiscal year. Here's the current breakdown per IRS guidance ^[4]: | Organization size | Form required |

what happens if we miss three years of 990 filings?

Automatic revocation. No warning letter first, no phone call. The rule, under Internal Revenue Code section 6033(j), is that failure to file required 990-series returns for three consecutive years results in automatic loss of tax-exempt status, effective as of the filing due date of the third year ^[2]. The IRS maintains an Auto-Revocation List you can search ^[6]. If your organization's name shows up there, you're no longer tax-exempt, meaning any income (even from bake sales) could technically be taxable, and donors' gifts are no longer tax-deductible. That's a serious problem for a group that relies on parent donations and needs a letter for a school district or sponsor. The fix is Form 1023 or 1023-EZ reinstatement, sometimes with retroactive reinstatement available if you can show reasonable cause for the missed filings ^[7]. It's a real process, it takes real paperwork, and it is not instant. If your group is on the revocation list right now, don't panic, but don't wait either. Confirm current reinstatement procedures and fees with the IRS directly, since forms and fee amounts get updated. This is one reason handoff between treasurers matters so much: a new treasurer who doesn't know a 990 was ever required is the most common way three years slip by silently.

what does a treasurer do?

A treasurer is the person responsible for an organization's money: tracking it, reporting on it, and making sure it's spent and recorded honestly. For a booster club, PTO, or youth sports league, that usually means four buckets of work. First, bookkeeping. Every dollar in (dues, concession sales, raffle tickets, sponsorships) and every dollar out (uniforms, tournament fees, referee pay) gets recorded, ideally in something more structured than a shoebox of receipts. Second, banking. The treasurer usually manages the bank account, reconciles statements monthly, and makes sure two people, not one person alone, can see and approve major transactions. Third, reporting. That's board meeting updates, budget-vs-actual reports, and the annual 990 filing. Fourth, compliance. State charity registration, raffle licensing if you run games of chance, and keeping the group's tax-exempt paperwork current. None of this requires an accounting degree. It requires consistency: doing the reconciliation every month instead of catching up once a year, and writing things down so the next person (because treasurers rotate constantly in volunteer organizations) can pick up where you left off. A decent chunk of nonprofit financial trouble isn't fraud, it's just gaps: nobody reconciled the account for eight months, nobody knew a 990 was due, nobody kept the raffle license renewal on a calendar. The job is less about finance theory and more about not letting things slip.

what does a club treasurer do day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year?

Breaking it into a timeline helps, because "treasurer" sounds like one job but it's really three different rhythms. Weekly or as-needed: deposit cash from events (ideally with two people counting it together), pay approved invoices, log transactions as they happen rather than in a batch three months later. Monthly: reconcile the bank statement against your ledger, report a simple budget-vs-actual summary to the board, flag anything unusual (a missing deposit, a duplicate payment) while it's still fresh and fixable. Annually: file the correct 990 version by the deadline (the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends, so May 15 for a calendar-year organization) ^[1], renew any state charitable solicitation registration, renew raffle or gaming licenses if applicable, and prepare a handoff packet in case you're not the treasurer next year (a lot of volunteer treasurers aren't). The annual tasks are the ones that get missed, because they only happen once a year and there's no natural reminder. A shared calendar with hard dates, not "sometime in spring," solves most of this. If your organization has been sloppy about deadlines, our form-990 page has a filing calendar you can copy.

what is a treasurer, in a legal and practical sense, for a nonprofit board?

Legally, a treasurer is an officer position defined by your organization's bylaws, usually elected by the board, with fiduciary duties to manage the organization's assets responsibly. "Fiduciary" is a fancy word, but it means something concrete: you have to act in the organization's financial interest, not your own, and you can be held personally accountable if you're negligent or dishonest with the funds. Practically, most booster club and PTO bylaws describe the treasurer's duties in a paragraph or two: maintain financial records, present financial reports at meetings, manage the bank account, assist with the annual budget, and ensure tax filings happen. Some bylaws are vague on this last point, which is a mistake worth fixing, because "someone" filing the 990 too often means no one does. One detail that trips up new treasurers: the treasurer role and the organization's Employer Identification Number (EIN) are separate things. The EIN belongs to the organization permanently. The treasurer is just the person currently responsible for using it correctly. When treasurers change, the IRS record of the "responsible party" on file should get updated too, using Form 8822-B . Skipping this means IRS notices, including revocation warnings, can go to someone who isn't even involved anymore.

what do treasurers do specifically to prepare and file the 990?

Filing the 990 well starts long before the form itself. Here's the realistic sequence. Step one: know your fiscal year end and your gross receipts, so you know which version applies (see the table above). Step two: gather the numbers, total revenue by source (dues, fundraisers, sponsorships, grants), total expenses by category, and ending cash/asset balances. If you reconciled monthly all year, this step takes an afternoon. If you didn't, it can take weeks of digging through bank statements. Step three: file. For 990-N, it's a short online form through the IRS's Tax Exempt Organization Search e-Postcard portal ^[5], no cost, done in about 15 minutes if you have the numbers ready. For 990-EZ or full 990, you'll likely want either nonprofit-specific software or a preparer familiar with nonprofit returns, since these forms include schedules for compensation, fundraising events, and governance questions. Step four: keep a copy, and keep the confirmation. The IRS doesn't mail a receipt for 990-N filings the way it does for some other submissions, so screenshot or save the confirmation page. Step five: hand the file to next year's treasurer, labeled clearly, before you forget where you put it. A $99 one-time State-Personalized Treasurer Kit is one option if you want the whole cycle (federal filing calendar, state raffle rules for your specific state, records checklist) put together for you instead of assembled from scratch. It's not a substitute for actually doing the reconciliation work, but it saves the research time of figuring out which forms apply to your state and organization type.

what does a treasurer of a club do that's different from a corporate accountant?

A club treasurer is a volunteer, usually serving one or two years, usually with no formal accounting training, managing money for an organization that runs almost entirely on trust and spreadsheets rather than professional finance systems. That's a very different job from a corporate accountant, and pretending otherwise sets people up to fail. A corporate accountant has systems: accounting software, an audit trail, professional oversight, often a whole finance department. A club treasurer often has a checkbook, a shared spreadsheet, and whatever the last treasurer left behind (which is sometimes nothing). The stakes are lower in absolute dollars but the exposure is personal: a volunteer treasurer who signs the 990 is attesting, under penalty of perjury, that it's accurate . The fix isn't to pretend you need a CPA for a $15,000 booster club budget. It's to build in the basic controls that don't cost money: two signers on the bank account, a monthly reconciliation habit, receipts for cash handling, and a written procedure so the next treasurer doesn't start from zero. Our financial-controls guidance covers the specific controls worth setting up even for small volunteer groups.

is the 990 the same as a tax return we'd owe money on?

No, and this confuses new treasurers constantly. A 990 is an information return, not a tax bill. Filing it correctly doesn't usually create a tax liability, because the whole point of tax-exempt status is that qualifying income isn't taxed. There's an exception worth knowing: unrelated business income. If your organization runs a business activity unrelated to its exempt purpose (renting out parking for unrelated events, running an ad-heavy commercial operation) and that income exceeds $1,000, you may owe tax on it via Form 990-T, filed alongside your regular 990 . For most booster clubs selling concessions at their own team's games or running raffles tied to their mission, this rarely applies, but it's worth a quick gut-check if your group has an unusual side income stream. The bigger financial risk isn't owing tax on the 990, it's losing exempt status by not filing at all, which then makes future income potentially taxable and strips donors of the deduction that makes giving attractive in the first place.

what happens to state-level filings when we sort out the federal 990?

The 990 is federal, filed with the IRS. Most states have a separate requirement: charitable solicitation registration, sometimes an annual renewal, filed with the state Attorney General's office or a Secretary of State charities division. These are two different systems and treasurers sometimes assume fixing one fixes the other. It doesn't. Requirements vary a lot by state, both in threshold (some states exempt very small organizations, others don't) and in whether a copy of your federal 990 needs to be attached to the state filing. Confirm with the IRS and your state charity office for your specific state's current thresholds and forms, since these do change year to year. If your club runs a raffle as part of fundraising, that's yet another layer: a separate state gaming or charitable gaming license, usually issued by a state gaming commission or the Attorney General's office, with its own annual reporting. See our raffles-by-state hub for state-specific guidance if that applies to your group.

Frequently asked questions

what does a treasurer do for a small booster club or PTO?

A treasurer tracks all money coming in and going out, reconciles the bank account monthly, reports finances to the board, and handles required filings like the annual IRS Form 990 and any state charity registration. In practice it's mostly consistent recordkeeping and calendar discipline, not advanced accounting.

what is form 990 in simple terms?

Form 990 is the annual information return the IRS requires from tax-exempt organizations instead of a standard income tax return. It reports revenue, expenses, and activities so the IRS and the public can confirm the organization is still operating for its stated exempt purpose ^[1].

what is the difference between 990-N and 990-EZ?

Form 990-N (the e-Postcard) is for organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less, filed online with just eight data points and no schedules. Form 990-EZ applies to organizations under $200,000 in gross receipts and under $500,000 in total assets, and requires more detailed financial reporting ^[4].

what happens if a nonprofit doesn't file a 990 for three years?

The IRS automatically revokes tax-exempt status after three consecutive years of missed required 990-series filings, per Internal Revenue Code section 6033(j) ^[2]. There's no warning letter first. Reinstatement requires filing Form 1023 or 1023-EZ and can take real time and paperwork.

do small booster clubs really have to file anything with the IRS?

Yes. Even organizations with under $50,000 in gross receipts must file Form 990-N annually to keep their tax-exempt status, once they hold 501(c)(3) or similar status. Filing nothing for three straight years triggers automatic revocation, regardless of how small the organization is ^[2].

what is a treasurer of a club responsible for legally?

A club treasurer is an officer with fiduciary duty to manage the organization's funds honestly and in its best interest, as defined by the group's bylaws. That includes recordkeeping, financial reporting to the board, and ensuring required tax and state filings happen on time.

is the 990 form public information?

Yes. Form 990 filings are public records, searchable through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool and through nonprofit databases like Candid's GuideStar ^[3]. Donors and the public can view revenue, expenses, and (for larger organizations) executive compensation.

how do we know which 990 version our organization has to file?

Check your organization's gross receipts and total assets at fiscal year end. Under $50,000 in gross receipts means Form 990-N; under $200,000 receipts and under $500,000 assets means 990-EZ (or full 990); above those, the full Form 990 ^[4]. Private foundations always file 990-PF regardless of size.

can a new treasurer fix a missed 990 filing from a previous year?

Often yes. A late 990-N or 990-EZ can usually still be filed even after the deadline passes; it just won't be on time. The urgent issue is only if three consecutive years were missed, which triggers automatic revocation and requires a reinstatement application, more than a late filing ^{[2] [7]}.

what's the deadline for filing the 990?

The 990 is due the 15th day of the 5th month after your organization's fiscal year ends. For a calendar-year organization (year ending December 31), that's May 15 ^[8]. Extensions are available using Form 8868 if you need more time.

does filing a 990 mean our club owes taxes?

Usually no. The 990 is an information return, not a tax bill, and income tied to your exempt purpose stays untaxed. The exception is unrelated business income over $1,000 from activities unconnected to your mission, which can trigger a separate Form 990-T filing and possible tax ^[11].

what should a treasurer hand off to the next treasurer?

At minimum: the bank account info and signers, the current year's ledger and receipts, the EIN and any IRS correspondence, copies of the last three years of 990 filings, state charity registration status, and any raffle license paperwork. A written handoff checklist prevents the multi-year filing gaps that cause revocation.

Sources

1. IRS, About Form 990: Tax-exempt organizations file Form 990 to provide information required by section 6033
2. IRS, Tax Exempt Organization Search: Public tool to look up an organization's 990 filings and exempt status
3. IRS, Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations (Form 990-N): Form 990-N e-Postcard filing process and eligibility for organizations under $50,000 gross receipts
4. IRS, Automatic Revocation of Exemption List: Searchable list of organizations that lost tax-exempt status through automatic revocation
5. IRS, Automatic Revocation - How to Have Your Tax-Exempt Status Reinstated: Reinstatement process using Form 1023 or 1023-EZ after automatic revocation
6. IRS, Form 8822-B, Change of Address or Responsible Party - Business: Organizations must update the IRS when the responsible party changes
7. IRS, Unrelated Business Income Tax: Unrelated business income over $1,000 may require Form 990-T and possible tax