Help! -- It sounds like you are doing all you can and that you are in the home stretch! Good luck! Rose C.

We are working to become legal, I hope it will be done by next week.
I am also trying to get our PTO to become tax exempt
its a very slow prosses but, I know we will get there!

How about the fact that you are operating illegally. Is that a concern? You don't get to just ignore the IRS. If you aren't set up as a non-profit, then you are just a regular business and should be filing a return like every other business. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. The fact is, it's unlikely the IRS is going to come looking for you.

Since my last post I have done some leg work(should have done that first huh)...
I found out we are not tax exempt, like the "old PTOers" think
That we have been incorporated in the past... we need to file a reinstate and 2010 funds with the secretary of state, then 2011 by april 1st (which is going to translate into we think yall are stealing because everything ends up like that)

we are finding it very hard for any change to happen in our group
even very little stuff is a BIG fight... almost like we are in high school

our States law says that we dont have to be a 501c3, what would be a good selling point besides corporations would be more willing to donate to us?
I need something to take to them besides just ooh we are not tax exempt, but we can file for 400.00 they would flip there lids.... heck they are going to flip their lids when they find out I looked up our groups info... as they dont want to share with the "new board" at all.... even to the point they would rather us fall on our faces... which we just did

every time we ask for info they never have any....
but they have lots of stink for us...
it has our school divided between the old and the new
I think it might be better if we just dissolve and regrouped next year...

Im sorry for the unloading

The answer to that is really form 1023, the application for tax-exempt status. Your group is in gray area, and you're not alone. Lots of PTOs are in the same place. You're operating as a nonprofit, but you don't have formal tax-exempt status. There's no form for that. PTOs that are 501c3 public charities primarily file form 990-ez or 990-n, depending on their size. These are information returns — they report their financial activity but don't pay taxes. But those forms are only for 501c3s.

The IRS wants all PTOs to come into compliance by filing for 501c3 status. They've made it cheaper for smaller groups to file, and they've made the tax information return easier for organizations with little revenue. At the same time, they're cracking down on organizations that aren't in compliance. We haven't seen any groups get in trouble for past practices if they start the process themselves — only when the IRS contacts them first.

The article 501c3 for PTOs explains the process:

www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/394-501c3-for-ptos

And our Startup Toolkit walks you through the application question by question:

www.ptotoday.com/startup-guide

Good luck!

we have a EIN
as far as I can tell in the last 20 years the PTO has never filed a tax return,
I want to do it right so what form do I need to use?