Form 990-N e-Postcard: Filing, Deadlines, and Reinstatement

If your nonprofit’s gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less, the IRS lets you meet your annual reporting duty with the Form 990-N e-Postcard, a free online notice that takes about five minutes and asks for eight basic items about your organization. File it by the 15th day of the 5th month after your tax year ends. Skip it three years running and your tax-exempt status is revoked automatically, with no appeal.

Who Has to File

You can use the e-Postcard if your organization’s gross receipts are “normally” $50,000 or less.¹ The IRS reads “normally” as a rolling average. For an organization at least three years old, that means the average of gross receipts over the prior three tax years, including the current filing year, is $50,000 or less.² A first-year organization qualifies if it has received or been pledged $75,000 or less.

Gross receipts is the total your organization took in from all sources during the year — dues, grants, donations, sales, investment income — with no expenses subtracted.³ A year with zero activity still requires a filing, as long as you’re still tax-exempt and eligible.

Organizations That Can’t Use the E-Postcard

Some exempt organizations are excluded no matter how small. Private foundations file Form 990-PF instead. Section 509(a)(3) supporting organizations must file Form 990 or 990-EZ. Political organizations under IRC Section 527 with a filing requirement also use the longer returns.²

Churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches that qualify under Section 501(c)(3) don’t file an annual return or notice at all, and they aren’t subject to automatic revocation for non-filing.⁴

If you’ve outgrown the e-Postcard, the next step depends on two numbers, not one. Form 990-EZ is available when gross receipts are under $200,000 and total assets are under $500,000.⁵ Hit or exceed either threshold and you file the full Form 990.⁶

When It’s Due

The e-Postcard is due by the 15th day of the 5th month after the close of your tax year. Calendar-year organizations file by May 15. A June 30 fiscal year end means a November 15 deadline.¹

There is no extension. Form 8868, which extends the longer 990 series returns, explicitly doesn’t apply to the e-Postcard.⁷ Put the date on the calendar and file early.

What You Need Before You Log In

Gather these first and the whole filing takes just a few minutes:

Employer Identification Number (EIN), the federal tax ID assigned when the organization was formed or applied for exemption.
Tax year end date (December 31 for calendar-year filers).
Legal name and mailing address, exactly matching IRS records. If either has changed, update IRS records before filing.
Principal officer’s name and address. This is the person with ultimate responsibility for implementing the governing body’s decisions or supervising operations, usually the president, executive director, or treasurer.⁸
Website URL, if the organization has one.
Confirmation that gross receipts are $50,000 or less.
Whether the organization has terminated or is going out of business.

Note what isn’t on that list: financial statements, balance sheets, or a full officer roster. The e-Postcard is a notice that your organization still exists and still qualifies, not a financial report.

Filing It Online

Form 990-N is electronic only. There is no paper version. File through the IRS Form 990-N Electronic Filing system at IRS.gov, free of charge.⁹

Access requires a Login.gov or ID.me account. If you don’t have one, you’ll set it up during sign-in. ID.me typically asks for a photo of an identity document (driver’s license, state ID, or passport) and a selfie to verify identity.¹⁰ Use the email tied to your IRS account. Set the account up well before the deadline, because if a video chat with an agent is needed the verification can take a day or two.

Once you’re in, enter the EIN. The system validates it and pulls up your organization’s information. Fill in or confirm the remaining fields, then check the EIN and tax year end carefully. An error there can cause a rejection or file the notice against the wrong period.

To submit, you electronically sign by entering the principal officer’s name and title, certifying under penalty of perjury that the information is correct. The system returns a confirmation code. Save or print it right away. That code is your only proof you filed on time.

What Happens If You File Late or Miss a Year

There is no monetary penalty for filing the e-Postcard late.¹ That’s a real difference from Forms 990 and 990-EZ, which carry daily late-filing penalties of $20 a day up to $12,000 for organizations with gross receipts under roughly $1.2 million.¹¹ If you’re a week or a month late with the e-Postcard, file it anyway. There’s no fine, and filing resets the clock on the much bigger risk.

That bigger risk is automatic revocation. Failing to file any required annual return or notice, including the e-Postcard, for three consecutive tax years costs an organization its tax-exempt status by operation of law.¹² Revocation takes effect on the filing due date of the third missed year.¹³ Congress mandated it in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and the IRS has no authority to make exceptions.

A revoked organization can no longer receive tax-deductible contributions and may owe corporate income tax on net earnings. The IRS publishes revoked organizations on its Tax Exempt Organization Search tool, where donors, grantmakers, and state regulators can see them.¹² Most grant applications ask about revocation history, so the record can follow the organization even after reinstatement.

Getting Exemption Back After Revocation

Reinstatement means filing a new exemption application. There is no appeal for automatic revocations.¹³ The path depends on how quickly you act and what returns you were supposed to file.

Streamlined Retroactive Reinstatement

This is the fastest option and the one most former 990-N filers use. You qualify if the organization was eligible to file Form 990-N or 990-EZ for each of the three missed years, has not been auto-revoked before, and applies within 15 months of the later of the revocation letter date or the date the organization appeared on the IRS Revocation List. Eligible 501(c)(3) organizations can use Form 1023-EZ, with a $275 user fee.¹⁴¹⁵ Approval reinstates status retroactively to the revocation date, with no coverage gap.

Retroactive Reinstatement Within 15 Months

Organizations that don’t qualify for the streamlined process, such as those required to file Form 990 or 990-PF for any of the three missed years or previously auto-revoked, can still apply within 15 months for retroactive reinstatement. This path uses the full Form 1023 for 501(c)(3) organizations, or Form 1024, with a $600 user fee.¹⁵ The application is longer and processing takes more time.

Reinstatement After 15 Months

More than 15 months out, you can still apply, but retroactive reinstatement back to the revocation date requires showing reasonable cause for the failure to file. Without that showing, the IRS reinstates status only going forward from the application’s postmark date, leaving a gap during which donations were not tax-deductible and the organization may have owed income tax.¹⁴

Reinstatement for a small organization that acts quickly starts at $275 and weeks of processing. Delay or a complicated history pushes that to $600 or more, plus potential back taxes. Filing the free e-Postcard each year avoids all of it.

State Filings Are Separate

The federal e-Postcard does not satisfy state-level obligations. Many states require charities to register before soliciting donations from residents, and most require periodic financial reports to the state attorney general’s or secretary of state’s office.¹⁶ Some local governments have their own rules. Fees and deadlines vary, so check with your state’s charity registration office or the National Association of State Charity Officials for what applies to your organization.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations – Form 990-N (e-Postcard)
2
Internal Revenue Service. Annual Electronic Notice (Form 990-N) for Small Organizations FAQs – Who Must File
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax
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Internal Revenue Service. Churches, Integrated Auxiliaries and Conventions or Associations of Churches
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Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 990-EZ
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 990 Series Which Forms Do Exempt Organizations File Filing Phase In
7
Internal Revenue Service. Extension of Time to File Exempt Organization Returns
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Internal Revenue Service. Exempt Organizations Annual Reporting Requirements – Form 990, Parts I-V – Reporting Compensation of Principal Officers
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Internal Revenue Service. Annual Electronic Notice (Form 990-N) for Small Organizations FAQs – How to File
10
Internal Revenue Service. How to Register for IRS Online Self-Help Tools
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Internal Revenue Service. Exempt Organizations Annual Reporting Requirements – Filing Procedures – Late Filing of Annual Returns
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Internal Revenue Service. Automatic Revocation of Exemption
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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
15
Internal Revenue Service. Form 1023 and 1023-EZ – Amount of User Fee
16
Internal Revenue Service. Charitable Solicitation – State Requirements