CREW requests IRS investigate American Policy Coalition missing tax return
Based on the publicly available information, American Policy Coalition (APC) apparently failed to file its 2015 tax return on time and is at least 219 days late in filing.
APC is a nonprofit corporation established in Kentucky in 2011 as BluegrassVotes.org, Inc. In November 2015, BluegrassVotes.org changed its name to American Policy Coalition, Inc.
As a section 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization, APC is required to file annual Form 990 tax returns within four and a half months after the end of the organization’s fiscal year. See Treasury Reg 1-6033-2(e) For organizations like PAC that use a tax year ending on September 30, the annual Form 990 is due on February 15 of the following year. The IRS automatically grants one three-month extension, and tax-exempt organizations may request – and are routinely granted – a second three-month extension for reasonable cause.
Since forming and through its 2014 tax year, BluegrassVotes.org, Inc. filed Form 990-N “e-Postcard” tax returns using the legal name Bluegrass Votes. APC’s 2015 Form 990, covering Oct. 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016, initially was due February 15, 2017. If the organization received both of the allowable three-month extensions, APC’s 2015 Form 990 due date was August 15, 2017.
To date, the IRS does not appear to have received APC’s 2015 Form 990 tax return. Public information about tax-exempt organizations is available in the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Business Master File Extract (EO BMF), which “includes cumulative information on exempt organizations” with data that is “extracted monthly,” is “available by state and region,” and represents “the most recent information the IRS has for these organizations.” The EO BMF was updated most recently on March 12, 2018.
CREW has already made multiple attempts to obtain APC’s 2015 Form 990. However, CREW has not received a response to any of its requests.
Therefore, CREW respectfully requests the Internal Revenue Service investigate whether APC, a nonprofit organization exempt from taxation pursuant to section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), failed to file its 2015 tax return on time.