That is exactly my question. WHY! I have seen their bank statements and for the past few years they have carried over nearly 14,000. And at the start of this year they had 20,000. Which they have spent some of, but Im sure they intend tocarry over another 14,000 or so.

Each time I suggest that we fund this or that, I get the same reply "We dont have that kind of money"

I am the vice president and as far as I know we are not saving for anything special. The school is going through renovations and so there are alot of new things included in that budget!

I just wondered if there was any "law" about the sort of balance that a not for profit group should or shouldnt carry over!

Our year ends in the middle of the summer, but we have been doing inventory now because we have so much stuff (and we were asked to do it). I guess if we buy anything new, it can just be added to the list. They wanted to make sure the inventory got done, and we don't have much going on now, so maybe it seemed like a good time. I don't know why we own so many supplies, I think we should keep it easy for future volunteers and give this stuff to the school. I know that I will never volunteer for inventory duty again.

The supervisor at the IRS was very detailed, in fact I wondered if he was ever going to let me off the phone. He probably was going by the book, after all, he IS a supervisor at the IRS! But I can see how the IRS wouldn't know one way or the other about all of the PTO's property, if someone chose to not disclose it. It seemed he was trying to emphasize that listing these things would help to show what our money was spent on.

All the more reason to limit what you "own". I have a hard time imagining why the PTO would WANT to retain ownership of balls and hula hoops used in PE.

And - just curious - what type of cycle are you on that you are inventorying it NOW? Most PTO's have a fiscal year that ends in the summer - making their taxes due about October/November.

I guess you could be on a calendar year cycle, but that seems like it would make the accounting more difficult.

This strikes me as one of those questions where you could call IRS 10 different times and get 10 slightly different interpretations.

My bet would be that nonprofitnewbie got the 1-in-5 supervisors who'd say a PTO should be inventorying all that extraneous stuff. Would similarly bet that 3- or 4-out-of-5 IRS supervisors would tell you not to bother. (the final one would just be confused...)

Do know that nearly every 990 form I've ever seen from a PTO has *not* included that info. -- and it's never been an issue.
Tim

Wow, that's a surprise. Bummer. I thought I understood the meaning of line 24.

I called the IRS (1-877-829-5500). They had a supervisor speak to me. I described the type of items that we have in our inventory, and he confirmed that these things need to be listed as assets when we file the 990 EZ form (Part 2, line 24). I emphasized that we have a lot of little things, but that didn't seem to matter. He suggested looking at publication 557 for more detailed information about reporting assets. I guess the final decision as to what to report will be made by our treasurer (glad it's not me!). In the meantime, we will carry on with our inventory. We're almost finished, anyway.