Tax-Exempt Organization Public Record Workpaper

Proposed price: $249, one time. Up to 25 public EINs. One run. You receive a PDF methods record and a row-level CSV within 3 business days after written scope, confirmed public-source availability, authorization confirmation, and payment. This page is an offer test: there is no checkout, nothing is charged here, and nothing is watched afterward.

A missing filing record is not a missed filing, and a historical list match is not a determination of current status.

Describe your scope (no EINs, no files, no payment)

What the workpaper is

This is bounded clerical work over public files. You name a set of up to 25 organizations your network is authorized to administer. We retrieve the relevant official public files, record what those files showed for each submitted EIN at a stated retrieval time, and return two artifacts: a PDF methods record describing exactly which files were fetched, when, and how each row was produced; and a CSV with one row per submitted EIN under a fixed, published taxonomy.

The workpaper records observations. It does not reach conclusions. There is no tax, legal, accounting, compliance, filing, due-date, extension, eligibility, deductibility, delinquency, lapse, risk, or current-status conclusion anywhere in the deliverable, and we will not add one on request. If you need a conclusion, the people to ask are your own counsel or accountant, not a clerical workpaper.

The official tools are free. Read this before you consider paying.

Every file we read is published by the Internal Revenue Service at no charge, and the public search tool is open to anyone with a browser. You are not paying for access, for data you could not otherwise obtain, or for anything proprietary. You are paying only for five narrow things:

• Bounded clerical batching of up to 25 submitted EINs in one pass, instead of 25 separate manual lookups.
• Retrieval receipts: the source file name, the retrieval time, the response status, and the response byte count for each source we opened.
• SHA-256 hashes of retrieved source files, labeled as file equality only — a hash tells you two files are byte-identical, and nothing else.
• A fixed row taxonomy, so an absence, a mismatch, and a disagreement are three visibly different results instead of three blank cells.
• A methods record you can hand to a reviewer who was not in the room when the work was done.

Official sources we read

These are named to identify the publisher of each file. We are an independent service and have no relationship with the publisher.

• Tax Exempt Organization Search bulk data downloads
• Exempt Organizations Business Master File extract (EO BMF)
• Form 990 series downloads
• Automatic revocation of exemption for nonfiling — overview
• Automatic exemption revocation for nonfiling — effective date of revocation
• Tax Exempt Organization Search (TEOS) FAQs

Publication lag, and why historical dates are treated carefully

Source publication and correction lag can exist. A file we read may not yet reflect something submitted, processed, or corrected, and a later republication can change what the same file says. Dates carried on historical automatic-revocation lists can be inaccurate. They can omit weekend and holiday adjustments. They do not resolve whether an organization was later reinstated, and they do not describe current status. For that reason a list match is recorded as a historical observation with current status left unknown, and it is never rendered as a status finding.

Who should not buy this

Use the free search tool and the free downloads instead if you are checking one or two organizations, if you already run a scripted pull against the bulk files, if you need current status rather than a dated observation, if you need a determination of any kind, or if the answer you actually want is a professional opinion. A workpaper of 25 rows saves clerical minutes; it does not save judgment, and it does not replace anyone who is paid to exercise it.

Why someone might pay anyway

The buyer this is written for is a finance or operations director at a nonprofit network, reviewing only affiliated organizations the requester is authorized to administer. That person usually does not need better data. They need one dated artifact, produced the same way for every affiliate, that a board packet or an internal reviewer can follow six months later — including the rows where nothing was found. Doing that by hand for 25 affiliates produces 25 slightly different screenshots and no record of what was searched. That is the gap this fills, and it is the only gap it fills.

Start a scope conversation

Exact workflow

1. You submit the public request form. It carries scope description only.
2. We reply with a written scope: the row taxonomy, which public files will be read, the delivery window, and the exclusions below.
3. We confirm that the public sources are reachable and usable for the described scope. If they are not, we say so and stop.
4. You confirm in writing that you are authorized to administer the organizations in scope, and we agree a transfer method for the identifier list.
5. You send the list: public EIN plus public legal name, nothing else.
6. Payment.
7. We run once, and deliver the PDF methods record and the row-level CSV within 3 business days.
8. We stop. There is no monitoring, no proactive alert, no recurring run, and no subscription.

What the request form accepts, and what it refuses

The public request form accepts no EINs, no organization names, no files, no returns, no lists, no addresses, and no tax facts. It is a scope conversation, not an intake. A later qualified scope can accept only public EIN plus public legal name, and only after authorization confirmation and an agreed transfer method.

Working inputs are deleted within 30 days of delivery. They are never used for marketing, resale, enrichment, outreach, or model training, and they are never shared with a third party for those purposes.

What a delivered row may contain

The output allowlist is closed. A row may carry: the submitted public EIN; the submitted public legal name; the exact-name comparison result; the source file name and retrieval time; the response status; the response byte count; a SHA-256 hash labeled file equality only; tax period and filing type, only when observed in the public filing index; return type, only when observed in the public 990-N file; BMF subsection and filing-requirement code copied with their official descriptions but never interpreted; historical-list effective date and posting date when present; the observed dataset refresh or posting date; and the row state.

What is never included

Excluded without exception: in-care-of names; principal officers or any person names; street address; full ZIP; phone; email; filer narrative; Schedule B; 990-T; full return XML; return text; attachments; DLN; Object ID. These are excluded at the point the row is built, not filtered out of a draft, so no later formatting step can reintroduce them.

Row states

How BMF filing-requirement codes are handled

BMF subsection and filing-requirement codes are copied into the row with their official published wording and nothing more. They are never applied to your facts, never translated into what an organization "should" file, and never combined with a date to produce an expectation. If two sources disagree, or if a historical list match lacks resolvable effective, posting, or reinstatement context, the row is marked SOURCE CONFLICT or UNKNOWN rather than resolved by us.

Fictional mini-sample

The rows below are invented for illustration. They use only EIN 00-0000000 and the fictional organization Acorn Literacy Network. No real organization is being described, and no real record is reproduced.

If a source fails

Affected rows become UNKNOWN when a source is unavailable. If more than 20 percent of your rows are UNKNOWN solely because a source fetch failed, you choose: a full refund, or one rerun. If a source is withdrawn or corrected before delivery, we rerun or mark the affected rows UNKNOWN rather than deliver a row we can no longer support. If you notify us within 30 days after delivery that a source has been corrected, you receive one corrected workpaper. After that, nothing continues — we do not monitor the sources or your organizations at any point, before or after delivery.

Fit and not fit

A fit: a network with 5 to 25 affiliated organizations it is authorized to administer; a reviewer who wants one dated artifact with a visible method; a team comfortable with UNKNOWN appearing as a real answer; a one-time need tied to a specific internal review.

Not a fit: anyone needing current status; anyone needing a determination, opinion, or sign-off; anyone wanting ongoing watching or alerts; anyone whose list includes organizations they are not authorized to administer; anyone who wants person-level or address-level detail; anyone hoping a hash means a record is authentic rather than byte-identical.

Ask whether your scope fits

Questions

Is this a status check? No. It records what specific public files showed at a stated time, under a fixed taxonomy.

What does the SHA-256 prove? File equality only. If two files share a hash they are byte-identical. It says nothing about accuracy, authenticity, or authority.

Can I send a spreadsheet through the form? No. The public form takes scope description only. Identifiers move later, after authorization confirmation and an agreed transfer method, and only as public EIN plus public legal name.

Can you interpret a filing-requirement code for us? No. It is copied with its official description. Interpretation is not part of the deliverable.

Why is a name mismatch not resolved? Because resolving it would be a judgment about identity. We report the comparison and leave the judgment with you.

Can I buy it now? No. This page is an offer test with no checkout and no payment path. Describing your scope tells us whether the offer is worth building further; it does not create an obligation on either side, and nothing here should be read as evidence that anyone has bought it.

Independence

This is an independent service. There is no affiliation with, endorsement by, or approval from any government agency. No agency seals, logos, or trade dress appear here, and nothing on this page carries government status. The Internal Revenue Service is named only to identify the publisher of the source files, never as branding and never in the product name.

A missing filing record is not a missed filing, and a historical list match is not a determination of current status.

Describe your scope — no EINs, no files, no payment