How to File Form 990-EZ: Schedules, Deadlines, and Revocation

To file Form 990-EZ, confirm your tax-exempt organization qualifies for the short form, gather your revenue, expense, balance sheet, and officer records, complete the six parts of the return along with any required schedules, and submit it electronically through an IRS-authorized e-file provider by the 15th day of the fifth month after your accounting period ends. Miss that deadline without an extension and penalties start at $25 per day. Miss it three years running and the IRS revokes your tax-exempt status automatically.

Confirm 990-EZ Is the Right Form

Two financial tests decide whether you can use Form 990-EZ. At the end of the tax year, your gross receipts must be under $200,000 and your total assets must be under $500,000.¹ Cross either line and you file the full Form 990. Organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less can drop down to Form 990-N, the electronic postcard.²

Some organizations cannot use 990-EZ no matter how small they are. Private foundations file Form 990-PF. Sponsors of donor-advised funds, hospitals, and section 501(c)(29) nonprofit health insurers must file the full Form 990, as must group return filers and controlling organizations that transferred funds to or from a controlled entity during the year. Section 509(a)(3) supporting organizations can file 990-EZ if the numbers fit, but they cannot use 990-N even if receipts are under $50,000.¹

Churches, their integrated auxiliaries, conventions or associations of churches, section 115 government entities, and instrumentalities of the United States organized under an act of Congress don’t file an annual return at all.³

Gather Your Records First

The form goes faster when the numbers are already assembled. You’ll need:

Your legal name as registered with the IRS, any alternate name the organization uses, and your nine-digit EIN.¹
Full-year revenue totals broken out by contributions, grants, program service revenue, investment income, and other sources.
Expense totals for professional fees, occupancy, printing, payroll, and every other operating cost.
Asset and liability values as of both the beginning and end of the year.
Names, addresses, titles, hours, and compensation for every officer, director, trustee, and key employee who served at any point in the year.⁴
Written descriptions of your three largest programs by expenses, including how many people each served.

Bank statements, grant award letters, and payroll records back up the numbers you’ll enter. The IRS can ask for them later, so keep them filed.

Complete the Six Parts

Form 990-EZ has six parts, and each pulls from records you’ve already collected.

Parts I and II: The Financials

Part I is the income statement. Contributions, grants, and program service revenue go at the top; salaries, professional fees, occupancy, and other expenses go below. The bottom line is the year’s change in net assets. Part II is the balance sheet, showing total assets, total liabilities, and net assets at the beginning and end of the year.⁴

Parts III and IV: Programs and People

Part III is a narrative description of your three largest program services by expense. Write concretely: who you served, how many, what you delivered, what it cost. Donors read this section first. Part IV lists every officer, director, trustee, and key employee for the year with their compensation, including anyone paid nothing.⁴

Parts V and VI: Compliance Questions

Part V is a set of yes-or-no questions on political expenditures, governing document changes, and unusual income. Part VI adds questions for 501(c)(3) organizations on topics like operating a school or engaging in lobbying.⁴ Some “yes” answers pull in additional schedules.

Attach the Right Schedules

Missing a required schedule makes the return incomplete, which the IRS penalizes the same as filing late.

Schedule A is mandatory for every 501(c)(3) 990-EZ filer. It shows you qualify as a public charity, typically by meeting a public support test that demonstrates broad-based donor or government funding.⁵

Schedule B identifies contributors who gave $5,000 or more during the year. For 501(c)(3) organizations that met the 33⅓% public support test, the threshold is the greater of $5,000 or 2% of total contributions.¹ To test whether a donor hits $5,000, add up their gifts of $1,000 or more.

Schedule C is required if you answered “yes” to political activity or lobbying questions in Parts V or VI. It captures section 4955 excise taxes on prohibited political expenditures for 501(c)(3) organizations, and lobbying and political spending for 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) organizations, with an exception for in-house lobbying of $2,000 or less.⁶

Schedule L covers transactions with insiders: loans to officers or directors, scholarships to their family members, business transactions above set thresholds, and excess benefit transactions of any size.⁷

Schedule O is the catch-all for explanations. Any “other expenses” or “other assets” line, any “see instructions” prompt, any narrative the form requests: it goes on Schedule O. Nearly every filer needs it.

File Electronically

Paper filing is no longer allowed. Under the Taxpayer First Act, all 990-EZ returns for tax years ending July 31, 2021, and later must be filed electronically. A paper return counts as no return at all, and penalties start running from the original due date.⁸

You have to use an IRS-authorized e-file provider. The IRS publishes a list of software companies that have passed its Assurance Testing System for exempt organization returns.⁹ Pricing varies, and some providers charge under $100 per return. Once the IRS accepts the submission, you’ll receive an electronic acknowledgment. Save it as your proof of timely filing.

Know the Deadline and How to Extend It

Form 990-EZ is due on the 15th day of the fifth month after the end of your accounting period. Calendar-year organizations file by May 15.¹⁰ If the date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, it moves to the next business day.

Need more time? File Form 8868 before the original due date. It grants an automatic six-month extension with no explanation required, as long as the form is complete and on time.¹¹ For calendar-year filers that pushes the deadline to November 15. You get one extension per year, so treat it as your backstop.

What Happens If You File Late or Incomplete

Filing late without an approved extension triggers a penalty of $25 per day. The maximum for a single late return is the lesser of $13,000 or 5% of the year’s gross receipts. Organizations with gross receipts above $1,309,500 face $130 per day and up to $65,000 per return.¹

Same penalties apply to incomplete returns. Skipping a required schedule, leaving required line items blank, or submitting a paper return when electronic is required all count as failure to file.¹

On top of the organizational penalty, officers or managers can be personally penalized if the IRS notifies the organization of a deficiency and the responsible person still doesn’t fix it. That penalty is $10 per day up to $6,500.¹

You can ask the IRS to waive a penalty for reasonable cause. The standard is whether the organization exercised ordinary business care and prudence but still couldn’t file on time. Serious illness or death of the person responsible, a natural disaster that destroyed records, or reliance on incorrect advice from a tax professional may qualify. Forgetfulness and disorganization won’t. The IRS reviews at least the prior three years of compliance history, so a clean record helps.

Three Missed Years Means Automatic Revocation

Miss a required filing (990, 990-EZ, 990-PF, or 990-N) for three consecutive years and your federal tax-exempt status is revoked automatically. No hearing, no warning letter. Congress built the rule into section 6033(j) of the Internal Revenue Code through the Pension Protection Act of 2006.¹² Once revoked, the organization is treated as taxable, and donations stop being tax-deductible for donors.

Reinstatement is possible, but you have to reapply for exempt status by filing Form 1023, 1023-EZ, 1024, or 1024-A with the applicable user fee. Organizations that were eligible to file 990-EZ or 990-N for the missed years, and that have never been revoked before, can use a streamlined retroactive reinstatement process if they apply within 15 months of the revocation notice or the date they appeared on the IRS Revocation List.¹³ File later than that and you’ll need a reasonable cause statement covering all three years, which is harder to meet. Either way, you also have to file every missing return.

After You File

Federal law requires you to make your three most recent 990-EZ returns available for public inspection at your principal office during regular business hours. Regional offices with three or more employees must provide access too.¹⁴

In-person requests must be fulfilled immediately. Written requests get 30 days. You can charge a reasonable fee for copying and postage but can’t refuse or delay. The penalty for a responsible person who fails to comply is $20 per day, capped at $10,000 per return.¹⁵ Posting the return on your website or a platform like GuideStar satisfies the requirement and stops most in-person requests before they start.

If you find an error later, amend the return by refiling Form 990-EZ for that year, filled out completely, with the “Amended return” box in Item B checked. Attach Schedule O explaining what changed. There is no separate amendment form and no deadline for filing one, though correcting mistakes before the IRS catches them cuts your penalty risk.⁴

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 990-EZ
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Internal Revenue Service. Annual Electronic Notice (Form 990-N) for Small Organizations FAQs – Who Must File
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Internal Revenue Service. Annual Exempt Organization Return – Who Must File
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 990-EZ (2025)
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Internal Revenue Service. Exempt Organizations Annual Reporting Requirements – Form 990, Schedules A and B – Who Must File
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule C (Form 990)
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule L (Form 990)
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Internal Revenue Service. Exempt Organizations Annual Reporting Requirements – Filing Procedures – Certain Organizations Required to File Electronically
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Internal Revenue Service. Tax Year 2024 Exempt Organizations and Other Tax-Exempt Entities Modernized e-File (MeF) Providers
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Internal Revenue Service. Annual Exempt Organization Return – Due Date
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8868
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Internal Revenue Service. Automatic Revocation of Exemption for Non-Filing – Frequently Asked Questions
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Internal Revenue Service. Automatic Revocation – How to Have Your Tax-Exempt Status Reinstated
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6104 – Publicity of Information Required From Certain Exempt Organizations and Certain Trusts
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Internal Revenue Service. Public Disclosure and Availability of Exempt Organizations Returns and Applications – Penalties for Noncompliance