Last updated 2026-07-25
TL;DR
Nonprofit tax filing usually means Form 990-N (e-Postcard, free), 990-EZ, or full 990, depending on gross receipts. Under $50,000 in gross receipts, most small groups file the 990-N online through the IRS website by the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends. Miss three years in a row and the IRS automatically revokes your tax-exempt status.
what is form 990 and why does my club have to file it?
Form 990 is the annual information return the IRS requires from most tax-exempt organizations, including booster clubs, PTOs, and youth sports leagues that hold 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status [1]. It's not an income tax return in the way a business files one. Nobody's writing a check to the IRS off this form in most cases. It's a disclosure document: how much money came in, how much went out, what you own, who runs the thing. The IRS uses it to confirm your organization still deserves tax-exempt treatment. State charity regulators and the public use it too. GuideStar (now part of Candid) and ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer both pull 990 data straight from IRS filings, so if your club has ever been searched by a parent wondering where the money goes, this is the document they'd find. There are four versions, and which one you file depends almost entirely on your gross receipts and assets. Get the size wrong and you either overfile (wasted time) or underfile (risk of penalties or revocation). We cover the thresholds in the next section.
what is the 990-N and does my small booster club need to file it?
The 990-N, nicknamed the e-Postcard, is the simplest version. It's for organizations whose gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less per year [2]. If that's your club, this is almost certainly your form. It is not a paper form. You file it online, through the IRS's own portal, and the whole thing takes maybe 10 minutes if you have your EIN and basic info handy. Per the IRS, the 990-N requires only eight pieces of information: your organization's legal name, any other names it uses, mailing address, EIN, tax year, confirmation that gross receipts are $50,000 or less, and the name and address of a principal officer, plus a statement that the organization is still operating [2]. There's no financial detail beyond that yes/no on the $50,000 threshold. No balance sheet, no program expense breakdown. That's the tradeoff for being small: less paperwork, but also less public documentation if a parent or board member ever asks for financials. Keep your own books regardless; the IRS filing being simple doesn't mean your internal recordkeeping should be. For more on the exact steps and where the portal lives, see 990-n and form-990-n.
what's the difference between the 990-N, 990-EZ, and full 990?
| 990-N (e-Postcard) | Smallest orgs | Normally $50,000 or less | No asset test | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 990-EZ | Mid-size orgs | Less than $200,000 | Less than $500,000 | |
| 990 (full) | Larger orgs | $200,000 or more | $500,000 or more | |
| 990-PF | Private foundations | Any amount | Any amount | A few things trip people up here. First, "gross receipts" means total money in before expenses, not net profit. A concession stand that brings in $60,000 in sales against $55,000 in cost of goods is still a $60,000 gross-receipts organization, not a $5,000 one. Second, you use the average over your most recent three tax years for some size determinations, so a single big fundraiser year doesn't necessarily bump you up permanently [3]. If you're unsure which bucket you're in, err toward filing the more detailed form, or confirm with the IRS and a tax preparer familiar with nonprofits. Filing 990-EZ when you technically qualified for 990-N is not a problem. Filing 990-N when you should have filed 990-EZ can be. For a walkthrough of the EZ and full versions, see 990-tax-form and irs-form-990. |
This is where most new treasurers get confused, so here's the breakdown by size, straight from IRS guidance [3]: | Form | Who files it | Gross receipts | Total assets |
when is the nonprofit tax filing deadline?
Your 990 (in whichever version) is due on the 15th day of the 5th month after your organization's accounting period ends [4]. For a calendar-year organization (fiscal year ending December 31), that's May 15. Many school-affiliated boosters and PTOs run on a fiscal year that matches the school year, often July 1 to June 30. If that's you, your deadline is November 15, not May 15. Check your own bylaws or your original IRS determination letter to confirm your fiscal year, because this is the single most common mistake incoming treasurers make: assuming a calendar year when the group actually runs July to June. Extensions are available. Form 8868 gives most organizations an automatic 6-month extension when filed by the original due date [5]. Note that this extends the paperwork deadline, not any tax payment deadline, though most small booster orgs owe no unrelated business income tax anyway. If the deadline lands on a weekend or federal holiday, it pushes to the next business day, same as individual tax deadlines. When in doubt on your specific date, confirm with the IRS.
what happens if my club misses the filing deadline?
One missed year usually isn't fatal, though the IRS can assess penalties for organizations required to file 990 or 990-EZ that file late, generally $20 a day up to the lesser of $10,000 or 5% of gross receipts for smaller organizations, with higher daily penalties for larger filers [6]. The 990-N itself carries no monetary penalty for late filing, but a status hit hits harder. Here's the real danger: automatic revocation. Federal law requires the IRS to automatically revoke the tax-exempt status of any organization that fails to file its required return or notice for three consecutive years [7]. This isn't a warning-then-penalty system for the 990-N crowd. It's automatic, and it happens quietly. Plenty of booster clubs find out only when a bank asks for a determination letter, or when a parent notices the group's name on the IRS's Auto-Revocation List [8]. Once revoked, donations to your organization are no longer tax-deductible to the donor, and you may owe federal income tax on revenue going forward until you're reinstated. Getting reinstated means filing Form 1023 or 1023-EZ again, along with any delinquent returns, and in many cases paying a user fee. The IRS does offer streamlined retroactive reinstatement for organizations that file within 15 months of revocation, plus other paths described in Revenue Procedure 2014-11 [9]. It's a real project, not a quick form. Budget weeks, not days.
what does a treasurer do?
A treasurer is the person legally and practically responsible for an organization's money: tracking it, reporting on it, and making sure it's spent the way the board and donors expect. In a booster club or PTO, that usually means keeping the checkbook or accounting software current, reconciling the bank statement every month, presenting a budget-to-actual report at meetings, and making sure the group's tax filings (the 990 series above) go in on time. It's part bookkeeper, part compliance officer, part translator, turning a shoebox of receipts into numbers a volunteer board can actually understand. Nobody teaches this in school. Most treasurers learn it by inheriting a binder (or a login) from whoever did it last, sometimes with good notes, sometimes with none. The job also includes the boring-but-critical stuff: renewing the EIN paperwork if it's ever lost, keeping W-9s on file for anyone paid over $600, and knowing the difference between a reimbursement and a stipend for tax purposes. None of this is glamorous. All of it is what keeps a volunteer group out of trouble with the IRS.
what does a club treasurer do differently from a company's treasurer?
A corporate treasurer manages investments, debt, and cash flow at scale, often with a finance team underneath them. A club treasurer, whether for a booster club, PTO, or youth sports league, does something much scrappier: one person (maybe with a co-treasurer or bookkeeper parent helping) handling everything from concession-stand cash counts to the annual tax filing. What does a treasurer of a club actually do day to day? Realistically: deposit checks and cash promptly, log every transaction, keep receipts matched to expenses, produce a monthly or quarterly report for the board, and file (or hand off to a preparer) whichever 990 version applies. Add state-specific duties on top: many states require charitable organizations to register with a state charity office or attorney general before soliciting donations, separate from anything federal [10]. The scale is smaller, but the stakes for a volunteer are arguably higher in one way. A corporate treasurer has an accounting department behind them. A booster club treasurer often is the accounting department, working from a personal laptop between a day job and a kid's practice schedule. That's exactly the gap a state-personalized treasurer kit is built to close, a $99 one-time packet of state-specific checklists and templates so a new volunteer isn't rebuilding this system from scratch.
what records does a treasurer need before filing?
Before you sit down to file anything, gather: your EIN confirmation letter, last year's filed 990 (whichever version), a full income and expense summary for the fiscal year, a current balance sheet (cash on hand, any savings or investment accounts), and a list of board members and officers with addresses. If your group paid any individual or vendor $600 or more during the year, you likely need to have issued a 1099-NEC by January 31 of the following year, separate from your 990 obligations . Coaches paid stipends, DJs hired for a fundraiser, and photographers all potentially fall into this bucket. This trips up a lot of booster treasurers because it feels like a different problem from the annual tax filing, but the IRS treats it as connected: sloppy 1099 practice is often the first sign an organization's books aren't clean enough to trust the 990 numbers either. Also pull your state filing requirements. Many states require a separate annual charitable solicitation registration or renewal, on top of anything federal, and some tie continued raffle or gaming permits to that registration being current. Confirm the specific renewal form and fee with your state's charity office or attorney general, since these vary and change.
can I file the 990 myself or do I need an accountant?
For a straightforward 990-N, yes, most volunteer treasurers can and do file it themselves. It's designed for exactly that: no software purchase required, just the IRS's own e-Postcard filing system and about ten minutes [2]. For a 990-EZ or full 990, it gets more involved. These forms ask for functional expense breakdowns, compensation disclosures for officers making over certain thresholds, and sometimes supplemental schedules depending on your activities (Schedule G for fundraising events, for instance). A first-time treasurer inheriting a group at this size, especially one with prior-year filing gaps, is a reasonable point to bring in a CPA or an enrolled agent who's worked with nonprofits before. The cost of a bad EZ or full 990 (missed schedule, wrong classification) is generally more expensive than the cost of paying someone a few hundred dollars to get it right. This article and BoosterLedger generally are not accountants or a law firm, and nothing here is tax or legal advice. When your organization's situation gets complicated (large revenue swings, unrelated business income, a raffle or gaming license tangled up with your charity registration) that's the moment to pay for professional judgment, not guess.
what if my club's tax-exempt status was already revoked?
First, confirm it actually happened. Search your organization's name or EIN on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool, which includes the Auto-Revocation List [8]. Don't rely on rumor or an old board member's memory; check the primary source. If you're confirmed revoked, the path back usually runs through Form 1023 (or 1023-EZ if you qualify by size) plus any delinquent 990s for the years you missed. The IRS's streamlined retroactive reinstatement process, described in Revenue Procedure 2014-11, is available to organizations that apply within 15 months of the revocation posting date and that were eligible to file a 990-N or 990-EZ for the tax years in question [9]. Miss that 15-month window and the process gets more document-heavy. During the gap between revocation and reinstatement, your organization's income may be taxable and donor contributions aren't tax-deductible, which is a real problem if you're mid-fundraising-season and telling parents their donations are deductible when they currently are not. Be straight with your board and your donors about where things stand while you sort it out.
does my state require anything besides the federal 990?
Almost certainly yes, though the specifics vary a lot by state. Many states require nonprofits soliciting donations from residents to register with a state charity office, attorney general, or secretary of state, sometimes annually, sometimes with a renewal fee attached [10]. Some states also tie your ability to run a raffle to that registration being current and in good standing. This is genuinely one of the most state-specific parts of running a booster club, PTO, or youth sports nonprofit, and it's exactly the kind of detail that's easy to miss because it's not on the federal radar at all. A group can be perfectly compliant with the IRS and still be operating a raffle illegally in its own state because nobody registered or renewed on time. Confirm your specific state's requirements with your state charity office or attorney general's charitable division; don't assume the federal 990 filing covers it, because in most states it doesn't. If your group runs raffles or similar games as a fundraiser, treat the state registration step as separate homework, not an afterthought to the federal filing.
Frequently asked questions
What is a treasurer?
A treasurer is the officer responsible for an organization's money: recordkeeping, banking, reporting to the board, and making sure required tax filings (like Form 990) get done on time. In a booster club, PTO, or youth sports league, the treasurer is usually a volunteer, not a paid accountant, handling everything from receipts to the annual IRS filing.
What do treasurers do on a monthly basis?
Reconcile the bank statement against the internal ledger, log every deposit and expense with a receipt or invoice attached, and prepare a short budget-to-actual report for the board or membership meeting. Monthly reconciliation is the single habit that prevents year-end filing chaos; skip it and the annual 990 becomes a scramble.
What is Form 990?
Form 990 is the annual information return the IRS requires from most tax-exempt organizations, disclosing revenue, expenses, assets, and governance details [1]. It's not typically an income tax bill; it's a public disclosure document that confirms the organization is operating consistent with its tax-exempt purpose.
What is the 990 tax form, specifically, versus the 990-N?
The 990 (full version) is the detailed return for organizations with $200,000 or more in gross receipts or $500,000 or more in total assets [3]. The 990-N (e-Postcard) is the stripped-down version for organizations normally at $50,000 or less in gross receipts, requiring only 8 basic data points [2].
What does a treasurer do in a club, day to day?
Deposits and logs incoming money (dues, concession sales, fundraiser proceeds), pays and records outgoing expenses, keeps receipts organized, and reports regularly to the board. Around tax season, the club treasurer determines which 990 version applies and either files it directly (990-N) or works with a preparer for the EZ or full version.
What does a club treasurer do that a regular member doesn't?
The treasurer has signing authority on the bank account (usually alongside another officer), keeps the official financial records, and carries the legal responsibility for accurate tax filings. Regular members might help count concession cash or collect dues, but the treasurer is the one accountable to the IRS and the board for the whole picture.
What happens if I file the wrong version of the 990?
Filing a more detailed form than required (EZ when N would've sufficed) isn't a compliance problem, just extra work. Filing a simpler form than required (N when EZ or full was needed based on gross receipts) can leave your organization effectively unfiled for that year, risking penalties and counting toward the three-year auto-revocation clock [7].
Do small booster clubs really have to file anything with the IRS?
Yes. Even organizations with $0 in gross receipts that hold 501(c)(3) status are required to file the 990-N annually unless specifically exempted (like certain church-related organizations) [2]. There's no small-org exemption from filing entirely; the exemption is only from the detailed EZ and full forms.
How do I know my organization's fiscal year for filing purposes?
Check your IRS determination letter or your bylaws; many booster clubs and PTOs run July 1 to June 30 to match the school year, while others use calendar year. Your 990 is due the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends [4], so a July-June group files by November 15, not May 15.
Can a nonprofit lose its tax-exempt status permanently?
Not permanently in the sense of no path back, but the process to regain it after auto-revocation involves refiling Form 1023 or 1023-EZ, submitting delinquent returns, and possibly paying a user fee [9]. It's recoverable, but it takes real time and paperwork, and donations aren't deductible during the gap.
Is there a fee to file Form 990-N?
No. The 990-N e-Postcard is free to file through the IRS's own online system [2]. There's no IRS fee for the 990-EZ or full 990 filing itself either, though hiring a preparer for those versions typically costs money.
Does filing the 990 replace state charity registration?
No. The federal 990 filing and state charitable solicitation registration are separate systems. Many states require a nonprofit soliciting donations to register with the state charity office or attorney general, sometimes annually, independent of anything filed with the IRS [10]. Confirm your specific state's requirement directly with that office.
Sources
- IRS, Annual Exempt Organization Return: Who Must File: Most tax-exempt organizations must file an annual information return (Form 990 series)
- IRS, Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations, Form 990-N (e-Postcard): 990-N eligibility ($50,000 or less gross receipts), required information, and that it's free and filed online
- IRS, Form 990 Series Which Forms Do Exempt Organizations File: Gross receipts and asset thresholds distinguishing 990-N, 990-EZ, and full 990
- IRS, Form 990 Instructions (Filing deadline): 990 due date is the 15th day of the 5th month after the accounting period ends
- IRS, About Form 8868: Form 8868 provides an automatic 6-month extension to file exempt organization returns
- IRS, Form 990, 990-EZ instructions (Penalties for failure to file): Late filing penalty structure for 990/990-EZ filers
- IRS, Automatic Revocation of Exemption: Federal law requires automatic revocation of tax-exempt status after 3 consecutive years of not filing
- IRS, Tax Exempt Organization Search: Tool to check an organization's exempt status and auto-revocation status
- IRS, Revenue Procedure 2014-11 (Streamlined retroactive reinstatement): Streamlined reinstatement process available within 15 months of revocation posting date
- IRS, About Form 1099-NEC: 1099-NEC required for nonemployee compensation of $600 or more, due January 31