In response to ever-increasing focus of the federal and state governments on the activities of tax-exempt organizations, WTAS formed a special Exempt Tax Advisory Services (ETAS) Practice, bringing together experienced tax professionals to serve tax-exempt clients on a full-time basis. Our ETAS professionals have many years of experience in exempt organization matters, including experience developed at international professional services firms and at the IRS. We have served a broad range of exempt organizations such as healthcare systems, educational organizations, private foundations, pension funds and fundraising organizations. Our technical prowess and experience is reflected in the many tax articles our ETAS professionals have written and many tax presentations they have conducted.

ETAS is designed to assist not-for-profit clients identify, manage and reduce the risks associated with compliance with federal and state tax laws. The leaders of the ETAS Practice, although located in several geographic areas, work as a single national practice to address key client tax matters as well as judicial, regulatory and statutory actions.

We can help exempt organizations by:

• Preparing and/or reviewing tax returns, including Forms 990, 990-T, 990-PF, 5500, 5471 and state filings
• Preparing IRS exemption applications (Form 1023) for newly formed nonprofit organizations
• Preparing private letter ruling requests where formal IRS guidance is required
• Conducting independent tax reviews to help tax-exempt organizations required to adopt FIN 48 for their audited financial statements
• Helping donor-advised funds and their sponsoring organizations to understand and comply with the new tax rules

We also offer comprehensive consultation and assistance to exempt organizations on:

• Restructuring issues, including the creation of for-profit subsidiaries, limited liability companies, partnerships as well as tax-exempt affiliates
• Developing accounting systems for making supportable calculations of unrelated business income (UBI)
• Alternative investment strategies, including UBI analysis of proposed investment vehicles and multistate filing requirements
• Executive compensation matters, including development of deferred compensation arrangements and other retirement strategies, and developing rebuttable presumptions of reasonableness under the intermediate sanctions rules
• Establishment of fringe-benefit policies
• Development of employee business expense policies and procedures that satisfy the accountable plan rules and the intermediate sanctions rules

• Compliance with requirements for reporting charitable donations to donors and the IRS
• Preparing to cope with the redesigned Form 990 for 2008 and thereafter
• IRS and state tax controversy matters, including audits, document requests and other inquiries, as well as appeals of disputed items
• Ongoing excise tax issues of private foundations