The IRS this month will start to give the public an earlier heads-up on organizations whose tax-exempt status has been automatically revoked for failure to file an annual information return or notice for three consecutive years.
In June 2011, the IRS announced that some 275,000 organizations had lost their tax-exempt status. Since then, it has posted information about groups that are no longer tax exempt six months after revocation.
This time lag was a problem for donors who contributed to an organization before finding out it was no longer tax exempt. The donors were then unable to claim a charitable deduction.