Where Most Needed

Andrew Hind, the executive of the UK Charity Commission, has posted a challenge to charities to meet the deadline for filing reports of 10 months after the end of the fiscal year.  The challenge is due to the fact that a quarter of UK charities miss the deadline.  His news release goes on to state a number of reasons why charities should file on time. 

The UK situation is somewhat different from that in the US.  Here, the deadline for the filing of the Form 990 to the IRS is four and a half months after the end of the fiscal year, so organizations with a calendar fiscal year just passed their deadline on May 15.  Not very many make that initial deadline, and the IRS allows for an automatic three month extension, just by filing Form 8868.  A second three month extension can be requested, but it is granted only at the discretion of the IRS (so there better be a good reason).  (It should be noted that many states, which require registration in addition to the IRS if the organization raises funds from the public, do not allow for extensions.) 

How many charities file late in the US?  It's a mystery.  In the Senate finance committee hearings in 2004, William Josephson of the NY Attorney General's office quoted statistics from the National Center for Charitable Statistics that 70% of the returns are filed more the five and a half  months after the end of the fiscal year—which of course means that 30% are filed in less time.  I recall having seen a more detailed report of how long it takes to get all the returns from a year, but I can't locate it on the Internet.  Why is the data so hard to come by?  It could be that the revelation of how many charities need extensions of time would call into question the current deadlines at the federal and state levels.