The cleanest way to handle your situation might be to incorporate. The IRS considers an organization to be new as of its incorporation date, for the purposes of tax-exemption. You have 27 months from the date of incorporation to file for a retroactive (to the incorporation date) tax exemption. You would file form 1023 EZ. It might also be worth consulting an attorney who's experienced in working with 501c3 nonprofits. It might cost you some money, but it could save a lot of difficulty going forward.
Regarding the PTA, so much time has passed that it's probably not worth worrying about. If your group hasn't paid dues to the state PTA for that many years, I suspect they have long since deleted you from the roles.
We are a part of a newly elected PTO board. While going through documents and making sure our ducks are in a row we came across a few discrepancies. We aren't sure what to do or how to proceed.
First our EIN number was passed down on unofficial papers (literally a note that was passed from president to president over the years). We called the IRS to see if we could obtain an official letter stating our EIN. Got it no problem. After further review of the paper from the IRS our business name is under the Arizona PTA - which we aren't a part of anymore. We asked the IRS while on the phone and they said that once the EIN is assigned to us it is ours no matter what even in the case of a name change (changing it from PTA to PTO). Further review of the paper we see it says just because we have this EIN does not mean we are tax exempt. So we called the IRS again. We haven't been tax exempt since 2013 and nothing has been filed with the IRS since 2004. Cue mild freak out!
After digging into binders from years ago we discover somewhere around September 2000 they decided to become PTO rather than PTA. Now we aren't sure they followed proper guidelines to separate from the PTA (we have reached out multiple times to the state PTA office through phone calls and emails and have yet to receive a response). We have absolutely nothing saying when the switch happened or why it happened.
We want to do the right thing, but honestly have no idea where to start. We know we need to file a 1023 for tax exemption. Do we need to file for a new EIN number? Do we need to close our current bank account? Do we just let the former PTA/PTO dissolve and start fresh? Any help or guidance would be wonderful! Thank you in advance!
