A club’s fiscal year decides when its Form 990 is due

The deadline follows the end of the club’s year, which is why two clubs filing the same form can have deadlines months apart.

Ask a flying club treasurer when the annual return is due and the answer is usually May. Ask a ski club treasurer and the answer might be October, or September, and sometimes the treasurer isn’t sure. Neither is wrong. They’re using different fiscal years.

The IRS rule is the same for everyone. The Form 990 and the Form 990-EZ are due by the fifteenth day of the fifth month after the end of the organization’s accounting period, and the Form 990-N follows the same timing. The IRS gives the calendar-year example directly. The due date is May fifteenth of the following year.

Now apply it to a different year. A ski club often closes its books in the spring, after the season ends and the lodge goes quiet. If the fiscal year ends in May, the fifth month after is October, so the return is due in October. A year ending in April moves it to September. The mechanics never change. Count five months from the close of the year and take the fifteenth.

A yacht club or a flying club that runs on the calendar year files in May, right in the middle of the season when volunteers are busiest. Some clubs choose a fiscal year on purpose to avoid that. A year-end that lands in a quiet month means the treasurer is closing the books when the club is slow.

Weekends and holidays have a rule too. The Form 990 instructions say that if the due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the return is filed on the next business day.

Extensions follow the same logic. Form 8868 gives an automatic six months to file the Form 990 or Form 990-EZ. The Form 990-N is the exception, because the IRS says it can’t be extended. And as covered in another post here, an extension doesn’t extend the time to pay any tax that may be due.

A club’s fiscal year deserves some care before anyone touches it. It may have been set in the bylaws, with the bank, or on the club’s first return, and changing it involves its own steps. If your club is thinking about changing it, ask whoever prepares the return before the board votes on it.

What a treasurer can do today is find the date. Look at the last filed return and read the tax year at the top. Count five months and write the due date on the club’s shared calendar, with a reminder well ahead of it. Clubs that rotate treasurers lose this date more often than any other, because it lives in someone’s memory.

If the return came due and no one can say whether it was filed, that’s worth sorting out quickly. The IRS treats three consecutive years without a filing as grounds for automatic loss of exempt status, and a gap found early leaves a club with more room to work.

Not sure when your club’s return is due or whether it was filed? Let’s pull the dates and check.

Everything here is general information, not tax or legal advice. Reading it doesn’t make you a client, and your facts will change the answer.