Form 990
Tools
Board Questionnaire Template
The Redesigned Form 990 seeks more disclosures from tax-exempt organizations than ever before. Multiple areas of the Form require information on trustees/directors, officers and key employees (a group commonly referred to as "managers") as well as those individuals' family members and business holdings. Much of the data necessary to respond to inquiries concerning managers' direct and indirect interests will be outside of the organization's knowledge. It is thus necessary for filers to undertake "reasonable efforts" to procure information from their trustees/directors, officers and key employees.
The 2008 Form 990 Instructions specify that an annual questionnaire may be utilized as evidence of an organization’s “reasonable effort” to access data the Form requires on certain individuals. This “Board Questionnaire” provides Form 990 filers with a template that includes all of the elements that the 990 Instructions specify as comprising a “reasonable effort” questionnaire for Trustees, Directors, Officers and Key Employees specific to the Form 990’s questions at:
- Part VI, Question 1b (aside from Schedule L, Parts I & II) ,
- Part VI, Question 2,
- Part VII, Section A,
- Schedule L, Part III, and
- Schedule L, Part IV
In addition, the example of a "reasonable effort" questionnaire for a grant making organization includes questions for individuals other than Trustees, Directors, Officers and Key Employees. This "Board Questionnaire" includes the components that the 990 Instructions specify would comprise a “reasonable effort” questionnaire for those individuals (grant selection committee members and in certain cases, substantial contributors) specific to the Form 990's questions at Schedule L, Part III.
Clark Nuber and Eve Borenstein* have together created a “Board Questionnaire” to be used with managers, as above, to meet the conditions the IRS has provided in the “reasonable efforts” examples in the 2008 Form 990 Instructions. The Questionnaire uses an excel workbook as an interactive tool that both allows filing organizations to determine the managers who should receive the questionnaire and creates an individual Excel questionnaire for each manager (the questionnaire can be presented to managers in either an electronic or a physical format).
* Eve Borenstein is an exempt organizations tax attorney who practices nationally from Borenstein and McVeigh (“BAM”) Law Office and teaches on Form 990 mandates (to CPAs and nonprofits) from her teaching consultancy, Eve Rose Borenstein, LLC.
Pricing (per Questionnaire Template) - for the 2008 Form 990
| Reporting organizations WITHOUT related organizations | Reporting organizations WITH related organizations | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 through 50 | $200 each | $250 each |
| 51 through 100 | $150 each | $200 each |
| 101 or more | $100 each | $150 each |
990 Organizer | $100 each | $100 each |
| *WA residents must add sales tax |
The board questionnaire and tax organizer templates for the 2009 Form 990 will be available by mid-February 2010.
Before ordering, organizations need to review Schedule R to determine if it has any related organizations. Each board questionnaire template will generate all the questionnaires needed for a single filing organization. Thus, each organization filing the Form 990 will need one template. For more information and assistance please contact: Form990Info@clarknuber.com.
990 Organizer
With the many questions, explanations, and new Schedules for the 2008 Form 990, how is an organization or the tax preparer required to know upfront what needs to be answered? Will the organization be overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to provide that may not be applicable? How will the tax preparer gather only the necessary information to prepare the return? How will the organization know whether what they provided to their tax preparer is complete? How will the tax preparer know whether what they received is complete without spending too much time sifting through the initial tax package?
These are some of the questions that our clients have been asking and that we hope to have solved with our new tax organizer and board questionnaire. Our new organizer is excel based and interactive. It is designed to only ask for information that is needed based upon an organization’s answer to various lead questions and is arranged in the same manner as how the tax return should be prepared. We’ve established a Home Page which will indicate the applicable sections of the Core Form and Schedules that an organization will be required to complete. In addition, there is an indicator in the upper right hand corner of each page that will track an organization’s progress.
How can Clark Nuber help you: The organizer was developed to streamline the process of gathering information and preparing the new Form 990. Clark Nuber is making the organizer available for a fee of $100 per organizer. We will provide you with a customized organizer for each organization. This will require providing Clark Nuber with key information about their client (e.g. name, address, exempt status, type, reason for public charity status from Sch A, etc.) which we will use only for this purpose. The organizer will have your firm’s name in various areas; your client will only see that the organizer is copyright protected by Clark Nuber. For more information and assistance please contact: Form990Info@clarknuber.com.