We Resume our Regular Programming

I'm back. Bearcastle.com and this blog have finished moving to the new server, and everything seems to be put back in order after the move. Even this brief hiatus seems to have left me at least elbow-deep in things to catch up on, although experience shows that I never will quite catch up. Ah well.

One thing that has been occupying my attention for the last couple of months, which I may have mentioned before, is the tax-exempt application (IRS form 1023) for Ars Hermeneutica and its ongoing examination process. I wrote all the stuff (some 40 or 50 pages) for the application and mailed it to the IRS in mid-September 2005. Not quite a year later we finally got word than an examiner had been assigned and that our application was being processed.

Since shortly after the beginning of August of this year, I'v been responding in writing to written questions from our examiner concerning our application. There are lots of unclear issues about tax-exempt activity and scientific-research organizations in the mind of the IRS,* and our examiner seems bent on looking at each one he can uncover.

At any rate, I just last night finished the third round of answering questions — only one question in this instance, actually. I'm hoping there's significance in the fact that the number of questions has been going down: the first set had 10 questions, followed by 3 questions in September, and then this singlet this month. Does this mean that the questions are vanishing and that the determination letter is close behind? We'll see.

The questions and the answers, all committed to writing, are public documents and freely available. Thus, if you are really interested in seeing the correspondance, you can find it all on the Ars Hermeneutica Corporate Documents page in the "Tax-Exempt Status" section.

Aside from all the 1023 work, and trying to carry on with other Ars work at the same time, I've also been pretty busy with directing the two shows we're doing for our fall musical production: "Wings" and "Scenes from Wonderland". (I wrote some about this back in August.) They are coming along quite well, but there's been a continuous stream of stuff to prepare, organize, and manage to get the shows ready to perform in addition to just the rehearsals that occupy two evenings a week and Saturday mornings. Next week begins "hell week" when we rehearse every night prior to our first performance on Friday, 20 October. All the performers are now over their initial shock at the unfamiliar idioms in the music and they're starting to relax and enjoy their performances. It looks like we'll have good shows.

In the middle of September a good friend died in an accident at home; he was only 34 and such things come as an immense surprise and shock, not just to his friends but much more so to his older partner. I still feel profound sadness from the whole incident.

And, of course, life keeps happening, there's always stuff to do just to keep up. This weekend we saw an opportunity to steal a few hours and we started painting our guest room. It's half done now, with all the stuff usually lining the walls piled on the bed in the middle of the room, and it's going to stay that way at least through this weekend before we can finish it up. It's a lovely, warm, medium orangy-gold color that makes the room feel very cozy. My arm aches from holding up the paint brush to do all the edges around the ceiling and baseboard.

That's it. No pleasing summary or moral to the tale, just stuff happening, and likely to continue happening for awhile. Right now I'm trying to breathe deeply a few times before plunging into this final rehearsal push before the show opens, and then some of the weight will lift.

—–
*There's a nice white paper on tax-exempt status and scientific-research organizations, published by the IRS, that surveys lots of the issues and the case law and reveals most of the issues about which the IRS has never been clear. I found it disconcerting last year when I first read this paper that virtually all the research organizations that I thought of as models for Ars Hermeneutica as a research organization have been sued at one time or another by the IRS over whether certain activities really were tax-exempt; I decided to be optimistic, however, on noticing that all of these cases were decided in favor of the research organizations.

Posted on October 10, 2006 at 13.42 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Reflections

4 Responses

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  1. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Tuesday, 10 October 2006 at 15.51
    Permalink

    Glad to see you back live online, Jeff. All those books are filled with what I don't know about tax policy and exemptions. However, with no ads are you subject to taxation?

    Hope your busy schedule won't mean you'll become a stranger at Oh!pinion.

  2. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Tuesday, 10 October 2006 at 15.53
    Permalink

    Jeff, let me express sincere condolences for the loss of your friend. Thirty four is awfully young. It's a shame.

  3. Written by jns
    on Tuesday, 10 October 2006 at 17.09
    Permalink

    Thanks for your condolences, SW.

    Becoming recognized as tax-exempt (the company, Ars Hermeneutica, and not me or this blog, btw) is reasonably straightforward but time consuming. Basically, one has to demonstrate that 1) the company is not formed to make a profit; 2) that we pursue work in recognized areas defines in the IRS code 501(c)(3), which in our case is education and scientific research; 3) and that we do our research to benefit the public, which is the category with the most traps to avoid.

    Being nonprofit, by the way, is the most curious category: it merely means that no one owns the company; i.e., there are no shareholders. Once corollary to this is that should the company ever dissolve, all of its assets must be given away to other nonprofit entities. (These things are specified in the Articles of Incorporation.) Being nonprofit really has nothing to do with not earning a profit — which we are allowed — but very much to do with what we do with that profit.

    However, this process could be said to be the very definition of government red tape.

  4. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Wednesday, 11 October 2006 at 11.50
    Permalink

    Sorry to hear about your friend. It is very hard for a parent to outlive a child.

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