private letter ruling

Subscribe to private letter ruling via RSS

Every January, the IRS releases a series of revenue procedures detailing how organizations can obtain private letter rulings and determinations and listing issues on which the IRS will not rule during the coming year.  This year’s procedures make clear that tax-exempt organizations will no longer be able to receive a ruling or any comfort from the IRS that changes in their operations are consistent with their tax-exempt status.  In other words, exempt organizations are on their own.

Until recently, an organization could request a private letter ruling from the Exempt Organizations technical branch that a particular activity or transaction would not generate unrelated business taxable income or adversely affect exempt status.  The IRS would not rule on factual issues, such as whether a proposed transaction was at a fair market value price, and would not rule on a few specific issues, such as whether participation in a joint venture with a for-profit entity would affect exempt status.

Late last year, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) issued a letter ruling, PLR 201446025, providing that, in certain instances, a nonprofit corporation exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, and incorporated in State A was not required to file a new application for tax-exempt status (IRS Form 1023) when it changed its domicile to State B by filing “Articles of Domestication” in State B and “Articles of Conversion” in State A.

In the ruling, the law of State B stated that the corporation’s filing of “Articles of Domestication” would not affect its original incorporation date. The law of State B also stated that the corporation would be considered the same corporation as the one that existed under the laws of State A, the state in which the corporation was previously domiciled. Similarly, the governing law of State A stated that following the corporation’s filing of “Articles of Conversion,” the corporation would continue to exist without interruption and be able to maintain its same liabilities and obligations.