Last updated 2026-07-24
TL;DR
Form 990-EZ is the mid-size annual return for tax-exempt groups with gross receipts under $200,000 and total assets under $500,000. It must be filed electronically, using IRS-authorized e-file software, by the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends. Smaller groups usually file the 990-N postcard instead; larger ones file the full Form 990.
What is Form 990, and where does the 990-EZ fit in?
Form 990 is the annual information return the IRS requires from most tax-exempt organizations, including 501(c)(3) booster clubs, PTOs, and youth sports leagues. It's not a tax bill in the usual sense (most filers owe nothing), it's a public disclosure document. The IRS uses it to check that a tax-exempt group is still behaving like one, and donors, watchdog sites, and state charity regulators use it to see how the money moves. There are three main versions, sorted by size. Form 990-N (the "e-Postcard") is for organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less [1]. Form 990-EZ is the short form for organizations with gross receipts under $200,000 and total assets under $500,000 at year end [2]. Form 990 (the full version) is for anything bigger, or for any organization the IRS otherwise requires to file the long form. So the 990-EZ sits in the middle. It's four pages, it asks for a summarized income statement and balance sheet, program service accomplishments, and some governance and compensation disclosures. It is more paperwork than the postcard, but far less than the full 990, which can run 12+ pages plus schedules. For background on the family of forms, see form 990 and [990](/articles/treasurer-basics/990).
Who has to file Form 990-EZ instead of the 990-N or full 990?
You generally use Form 990-EZ if your organization's gross receipts for the year were less than $200,000 AND total assets at the end of the year were less than $500,000 [2]. If either number is over that line, you're supposed to file the full Form 990 instead. If both numbers are under the 990-N threshold (gross receipts normally $50,000 or less), you can file the postcard instead and skip the EZ. "Gross receipts" is the sloppy phrase that trips people up. It means total revenue before subtracting expenses, costs, or cost of goods sold. So a booster club that brought in $180,000 through concessions, a golf tournament, and merchandise sales, and spent $170,000 of it on uniforms and gym rentals, still has $180,000 in gross receipts, not $10,000. A lot of new treasurers get this wrong in their first year and either under-file or panic that they owe money they don't. A few organization types can't use the 990-EZ even if they're small enough by the numbers, most notably certain sponsoring organizations of donor advised funds and some controlling organizations under section 512(b)(13). Private foundations never use 990-EZ; they use Form 990-PF. If you're not sure which bucket your booster club or PTO falls into, this is exactly the kind of thing to confirm with the IRS or a tax preparer familiar with nonprofits, not guess at. Related reading: 990-tax-form, 990n, and form-990-n if you think the postcard is really the right form for your group.
Can you file Form 990-EZ online, and is e-filing required?
Yes, and as of tax years beginning after July 2019, e-filing is mandatory, not optional. The Taxpayer First Act of 2019 requires tax-exempt organizations to file Form 990 and 990-EZ electronically [3]. Paper 990-EZ filings are effectively over for organizations that fall under this mandate; the IRS's own guidance confirms the electronic filing requirement applies across these forms for tax years beginning after July 1, 2019 [3]. You can't just upload a PDF to irs.gov. Form 990-EZ must be filed through an IRS-authorized e-file provider, meaning approved software (there is a list of providers on the IRS website) that transmits your return in the correct electronic format [4]. Some of these providers are free for small nonprofits, others charge a fee scaled to your organization's size. Shop around; pricing and included support vary a lot between providers, and the IRS doesn't set or cap third-party e-file prices. The practical workflow looks like this: gather your financials (revenue by source, expenses by category, a balance sheet), gather program accomplishment descriptions, gather officer/director names and any compensation figures, then enter all of it into the e-file software's guided interview. Most providers will flag missing fields before you can submit, which catches a lot of errors upfront that used to slip through on paper.
When is Form 990-EZ due?
Form 990-EZ is due on the 15th day of the 5th month after your organization's accounting period ends [5]. For a calendar-year filer (fiscal year ending December 31), that's May 15 of the following year. For a school-year filer (fiscal year ending June 30, common for PTOs and booster clubs tied to the academic calendar), that's November 15. If you can't make the deadline, Form 8868 gives you an automatic 6-month extension, filed electronically or on paper, and it doesn't require an explanation [6]. That pushes a May 15 deadline to November 15, for example. There's no penalty for filing the extension itself, but the extension only buys time to file, not time to pay anything owed (which for most 990-EZ filers isn't an issue anyway, since the form itself usually doesn't generate a tax bill for exempt organizations without unrelated business income). Miss the deadline (and any extension) three years running, and the consequence is severe: automatic revocation of tax-exempt status, discussed below.
What happens if you don't file, or file late?
The IRS is blunt about this one: "Organizations that fail to file for three consecutive years automatically lose their tax-exempt status" [7]. This is the auto-revocation rule under Internal Revenue Code section 6033(j), added by the Pension Protection Act of 2006. It doesn't matter if you missed the deadline because a volunteer treasurer quietly left, records got lost in a garage, or nobody realized filing was required at all. Three consecutive years of silence, and the exemption is gone by operation of law, no warning letter required before it happens. Once revoked, the organization shows up on the IRS Auto-Revocation List, a public database anyone (including donors and grant funders) can search [8]. Getting reinstated means filing Form 1023 or 1023-EZ again (yes, re-applying from scratch in most cases), paying the application fee again, and potentially filing all the missing 990s for the lapsed years. The IRS does offer streamlined retroactive reinstatement procedures for organizations that file within 15 months of revocation and meet certain conditions, described in Revenue Procedure 2014-11 , but it's still a real process, not a rubber stamp. Late filing penalties apply even before you hit the three-year cliff. For 2024, the penalty is generally $25 a day for a small organization's late 990 or 990-EZ, capped at the smaller of $12,500 or 5% of the organization's gross receipts for the year, though these figures are periodically adjusted and you should confirm the current amount for your filing year with the IRS . Point is: filing something late is annoying and costs money; filing nothing for three years is catastrophic and costs your exempt status.
What is a treasurer, and what does a treasurer do?
A treasurer is the person on a nonprofit's board or committee responsible for the organization's money: tracking it, reporting on it, and making sure it's spent and recorded the way the bylaws and the law require. In a booster club, PTO, or youth sports league, this is almost always a volunteer, often a parent who raised a hand at a meeting and is now in charge of a bank account with a few thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars running through it every year. What does a treasurer do in a club, day to day? The job usually breaks into four buckets: - Recordkeeping: logging every deposit and expense, reconciling the bank statement monthly, keeping receipts and invoices organized enough that someone else could follow the trail.
- Reporting: giving the board a regular (often monthly) financial summary, and preparing or coordinating the annual tax filing (990-N, 990-EZ, or full 990 depending on size).
- Compliance: making sure the group files what it owes to the IRS and, where applicable, the state charity registration office, and that fundraising activities like raffles follow state licensing rules.
- Controls: setting up basic safeguards, like requiring two signatures on large checks, separating who counts cash from who deposits it, and not letting one person have unchecked access to the account. What does a club treasurer do that's different from a corporate treasurer? Mostly scale and formality. A club treasurer of a small booster group is doing bookkeeping, filing, and internal controls essentially solo, with volunteer hours instead of a finance department. The core responsibilities (accuracy, transparency, compliance) are the same; the resources to do it are much thinner.
Does a booster club or PTO treasurer need to know the 990-EZ specifically?
Yes, if the organization's gross receipts and assets put it in that middle bracket. This is one of the most concrete, recurring parts of the treasurer job: figuring out which form applies this year, gathering the numbers, and getting it filed (or handing clean numbers to whoever files it) by the deadline. A lot of booster clubs cross the 990-N threshold in a good fundraising year (a big golf tournament, a strong concession season) and don't realize they've graduated into 990-EZ territory until a board member asks why the postcard filing didn't go through, or an accountant flags it. This is worth checking every single year, more than once. Gross receipts over $50,000 in one year doesn't lock you into 990-EZ forever either; if receipts drop back under $50,000, you can go back to the 990-N the following year, though the IRS calculates eligibility using a specific averaging method over three years for new organizations, so don't assume it's a simple single-year on/off switch [1]. See irs-form-990 for a broader walkthrough of which form applies at which size.
What information does Form 990-EZ actually ask for?
| Part I | Revenue, expenses, and changes in net assets/fund balances | |
|---|---|---|
| Part II | Balance sheet (beginning and end of year) | |
| Part III | Statement of program service accomplishments | |
| Part IV | List of officers, directors, trustees, and key employees, with compensation | |
| Part V | Other information (state reporting, lobbying, unrelated business income, etc.) | |
| Part VI | Section 501(c)(3) organizations only, additional information (governance, political activity) | Depending on your answers, you may also need to attach schedules. Schedule A (public charity status) is required for essentially all 501(c)(3) 990-EZ filers. Schedule B (contributors) is required if you received a large gift from a single donor over the threshold. Schedule G is for fundraising events and gaming (relevant if your group runs a raffle or bingo night, worth cross-checking against your state's raffle licensing rules). Schedule O lets you attach explanations for narrative answers. Most e-file software auto-generates the schedules you need based on how you answer the main form's questions, which is one of the real advantages of filing this way over trying to reconstruct a PDF by hand. |
Form 990-EZ has six parts. Here's the shape of it, not a line-by-line guide (that's what the IRS instructions are for): | Part | What it covers |
How does Form 990-EZ compare to the full Form 990 and the 990-N?
| Form 990-N | Form 990-EZ | Form 990 (full) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who files it | Gross receipts normally ≤ $50,000 [1] | Gross receipts < $200,000 AND assets < $500,000 [2] | Gross receipts ≥ $200,000 OR assets ≥ $500,000 [2] | |
| Length | 8 online questions | 4 pages plus schedules | 12+ pages plus schedules | |
| Filing method | Online only, through IRS site or authorized e-file | Electronic, via IRS-authorized e-file provider | Electronic, via IRS-authorized e-file provider | |
| Public financial detail | Minimal (basic info only) | Summarized income/balance sheet | Full detailed financials | |
| Typical prep time | Minutes | A few hours to a day, once records are organized | Several days, often needs a preparer | The honest takeaway: if your numbers put you right at a threshold, don't stretch to stay in a smaller form's bracket. Filing the wrong form is itself a problem, and it's cheaper in time and stress to just file the correct one than to guess low and get flagged. |
What does a treasurer of a club actually need to prepare before filing?
Before you or your e-file provider can build a 990-EZ, you need a clean set of numbers. In practice that means: A full year's bank and financial records reconciled to the penny, covering every deposit (dues, concessions, raffle proceeds, sponsorships, grants) and every expense (uniforms, equipment, insurance, gym or field rental, tournament fees). If cash changed hands at a concession stand or a raffle table, you need a count sheet or deposit log tying that cash to a specific deposit, more than a lump "cash income" line. A list of officers and directors, and whether any of them received compensation (even a stipend) from the organization, since that goes on Part IV. A short written description of your program activities for the year (what the money actually paid for and who it served), since Part III asks for this in plain language, more than dollar figures. Any large single-donor gifts, since those may trigger Schedule B, and any fundraising events or gaming activity, since those may trigger Schedule G. Getting these together is 90% of the actual work. Once you have them, entering data into e-file software usually takes a few hours, not days. This is also exactly the kind of prep that gets lost in a treasurer handoff, when the outgoing volunteer's spreadsheet habits don't match what the incoming person needs. A treasurer kit builder that pre-organizes these categories for your state can save real time here, though plenty of treasurers build their own tracker in a spreadsheet and that works fine too, as long as it's consistent year to year.
What about state filing requirements alongside the federal 990-EZ?
The IRS 990-EZ is a federal filing. Most states with charitable solicitation laws also require a separate annual registration or renewal, often (but not always) using the same 990-EZ numbers as a base. This is a completely separate obligation from the IRS one, and missing it doesn't touch your IRS exempt status directly, but it can get your organization barred from soliciting donations in that state, or trigger separate fines from the state attorney general's charity office. Requirements vary enormously by state: some require an annual report with a copy of your 990/990-EZ attached, some have their own separate form, some exempt small organizations below a revenue threshold, and some don't regulate charitable solicitation at all. There's no shortcut here: confirm with your state's charity registration office or attorney general's office exactly what your organization owes, every year, since thresholds and forms do change.
How do you actually file the 990-EZ online, step by step?
Here's the practical sequence most treasurers follow: 1. Confirm your organization's gross receipts and total assets for the year fall in the 990-EZ range (under $200,000 receipts, under $500,000 assets) [2]. 2. Reconcile your bank accounts and build a full-year income and expense summary, plus a balance sheet. 3. Pick an IRS-authorized e-file provider from the list on irs.gov [4]. Compare pricing; many are geared toward small nonprofits specifically. 4. Enter your financials, officer/director list, program descriptions, and any schedule-triggering details (large donors, gaming/raffle events) into the provider's guided interview. 5. Review the generated form carefully, especially Parts I through III, before submitting; most providers let you preview the full PDF. 6. Submit electronically and save the confirmation. Keep a PDF copy and the confirmation for your permanent records; you'll want it for the next audit, handoff, or grant application that asks for your last filed 990. 7. Separately, check whether your state charity office needs its own copy or its own annual form, and file that too if required. If you're inheriting a set of books mid-year with gaps or inconsistent categories, it's worth fixing the chart of accounts before you try to force old data into this year's filing. A messy 990-EZ that technically balances is still a headache for whoever files next year.
Frequently asked questions
What is Form 990?
Form 990 is the annual information return the IRS requires from most tax-exempt organizations. It reports revenue, expenses, program activities, and governance details, and it's public record. Depending on size, an organization files the 990-N postcard, the 990-EZ short form, or the full Form 990. It isn't usually a tax bill; it's a transparency and compliance filing.
What is a 990 tax form used for?
It's used by the IRS to verify that a tax-exempt organization is still operating consistent with its exempt purpose, and by the public (donors, grant makers, watchdog groups) to see how the organization raises and spends money. States also sometimes use it as the basis for charitable solicitation registration renewals.
What is the 990-EZ threshold for gross receipts and assets?
You generally use Form 990-EZ if your organization's gross receipts for the tax year were less than $200,000 AND total assets at year end were less than $500,000. If either figure is higher, the full Form 990 is required instead, per IRS instructions for Form 990 and 990-EZ.
Can Form 990-EZ be filed on paper instead of online?
No, not anymore for organizations covered by the mandate. The Taxpayer First Act requires electronic filing of Form 990 and 990-EZ for tax years beginning after July 2019. You need IRS-authorized e-file software; paper submission generally isn't accepted for these filings under current law.
What does a treasurer do in a booster club or PTO?
A treasurer tracks all income and expenses, reconciles bank accounts monthly, reports finances to the board, prepares or coordinates the annual IRS filing (990-N, 990-EZ, or full 990), and sets up basic controls like requiring two signatures on large checks or separating cash counting from cash depositing.
What happens if a club fails to file Form 990-EZ for several years?
Missing three consecutive years, whichever form applies, triggers automatic revocation of tax-exempt status under IRC section 6033(j), added by the Pension Protection Act of 2006. There's no warning letter first. Reinstatement means reapplying for exemption, potentially filing back returns, and paying application fees again.
When is Form 990-EZ due each year?
The 15th day of the 5th month after your accounting period ends. Calendar-year filers (year ending Dec. 31) owe it by May 15; fiscal-year filers ending June 30 (common for school-tied groups) owe it by November 15. Form 8868 gives an automatic 6-month extension if filed on time.
Is there a fee to file Form 990-EZ online?
The IRS doesn't charge a fee to file the form itself, but you must use an IRS-authorized e-file provider, and many of those charge a service fee that varies by provider and organization size. Some offer free or reduced-cost filing for very small nonprofits; compare a few before choosing.
What is a treasurer of a club responsible for besides taxes?
Beyond the annual filing, a club treasurer handles ongoing bookkeeping, monthly bank reconciliation, budget tracking against board-approved spending, cash-handling controls at events like concessions or raffles, and coordinating with the board on financial reporting. Taxes are one piece of a year-round job, not the whole job.
Does a 990-EZ filer also need to register with the state?
Often yes, separately from the IRS filing. Many states require an annual charitable solicitation registration or renewal, sometimes attaching a copy of the 990-EZ. Requirements and thresholds vary by state, so confirm current rules with your state's charity registration office or attorney general's office directly.
Can an organization switch between 990-N, 990-EZ, and full 990 from year to year?
Yes. Eligibility is based on that year's gross receipts and assets, not a permanent category. A group can file 990-N one year, cross into 990-EZ territory the next after a strong fundraiser, and drop back down later. Check the current-year numbers every single year rather than assuming last year's form still applies.
What's the difference between what a treasurer does and what an accountant does for a nonprofit?
A treasurer is usually a volunteer board member handling day-to-day bookkeeping, reporting to the board, and coordinating compliance. An accountant (if the group hires one) may prepare or review the actual tax filing, advise on complex questions, and provide independent verification. Many small booster clubs and PTOs have only a treasurer and no outside accountant at all.
Sources
- IRS, "Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations, Form 990-N (e-Postcard)": 990-N is for organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less
- IRS, "Form 990 Series Which Forms Do Exempt Organizations File": 990-EZ eligibility requires gross receipts under $200,000 and total assets under $500,000
- IRS, "Instructions for Form 990-EZ": Form 990-EZ is due the 15th day of the 5th month after the accounting period ends
- IRS, "About Form 8868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File an Exempt Organization Return": Form 8868 provides an automatic 6-month filing extension
- IRS, "Automatic Revocation of Exemption": Organizations that fail to file for three consecutive years automatically lose tax-exempt status
- IRS, "Tax Exempt Organization Search": Revoked organizations appear on a searchable public IRS database
- IRS, Revenue Procedure 2014-11: Streamlined retroactive reinstatement is available for organizations filing within 15 months of revocation under specific conditions
- IRS, "Form 990 Series Filing Due Dates and Penalties": Late filing penalties for small organizations are generally $25 a day, capped at the smaller of $12,500 or 5% of gross receipts