Taxpayers can find legitimate charities using the Tax Exempt Organization Search tool

IRS Tax Tip 2021-158, October 26, 2021

When taxpayers decide to support a cause they care about, they want their donation to do as much good as possible. Doing some research can help ensure donations go to legitimate and qualified charities and help donors avoid scams. The IRS's Tax Exempt Organization Search tool, is a great place to start.

Here are some key features and functions of this tool:

  • It provides information about an organization's federal tax status and filings.
  • Donors can use it to confirm that an organization is tax-exempt and eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions.
  • Users can find out if an organization had its tax-exempt status revoked.
  • Organizations are searchable by legal name or a doing business as name on file with the IRS or Employer Identification Number
  • The search results are sortable by name, EIN, state and country.

Users may also download complete lists of organizations eligible to receive deductible contributions, auto-revoked organizations and e-Postcard filers using links on the Tax Exempt Organization Search page of IRS.gov.

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