Updated 990 Draft Instructions Released

It is finally here! On April 7, 2008, the IRS released for public comment draft instructions for the 2008 Form 990. Here is a link to the announcement and the link to find draft versions of the instructions. Public comments on the draft forms will be open until June 1, 2008. You can submit your comments directly to them or in the comments section of this post and CAN will aggregate them and send them in.

Many of the draft forms have a highlights section in the beginning where the IRS describes what is new, different and where the IRS really wants our comments. Lats years comments on the draft 990 had many comments and critiques on the current instructions including:

• No glossary of key terms, too few definitions, and unclear definitions that are scattered throughout the form and that are difficult to find
• Too much extraneous material specific to particular types of filers is placed in the front end before the specific line-by-line instructions that apply to most filing organizations
• Ambiguous reporting standards for executive compensation, particularly with respect to the types of compensation that must be reported, and when and where they must be reported on the form
• Lack of examples in particularly difficult areas

The IRS is promoting new tools in these updated instructions to address these and other concerns so be sure and check them out and give us your feed back.