ExemptReady

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Form 1023-EZ or the full Form 1023?

Two forms, two very different workloads — and the choice is not yours to make freely. The IRS limits Form 1023-EZ to organizations that pass every eligibility test in its published worksheet. This checker applies those tests to your answers and shows its reasoning, so you can see exactly which rule decides your form.

Churches, schools, and hospitals have extra requirements and must use the full Form 1023 — the EZ is closed to them.

Gross receipts means everything the organization takes in, before expenses. The EZ test looks at any past year you have operated and each of your first three projected years.

Each of these closes the EZ path under the IRS eligibility worksheet, no matter how small the organization is. Check every one that applies — or "none of these."

Built from the eligibility criteria in the Instructions for Form 1023-EZ, including the Eligibility Worksheet (checked against IRS.gov, October 2026). This is an educational estimate, not an IRS determination. If your situation is unusual — a church, school, or hospital; foreign activity; a predecessor business — have a nonprofit attorney confirm the path.

Why this choice matters

File the EZ when you qualify and you save $325 in IRS fees and weeks of paperwork. File it when you don't qualify and the damage is worse than paperwork: the IRS can treat the application as the wrong filing, and your exemption's effective date — which decides whether early donations were deductible — can be lost. The full Form 1023 is not a punishment; it is the form built for organizations too big or too complex for the EZ's shortcuts. The only real mistake is guessing.

Three rules decide most cases. First, size: gross receipts of $50,000 or less in every past year and each of the first three projected years, and total assets of $250,000 or less. Second, type: churches, schools, and hospitals never use the EZ. Third, the long tail: a 30-question worksheet of excluded activities and classifications — supporting organizations, donor advised funds, credit counseling, and more — any one of which sends you to the full form. The checker above asks all of it in plain language.

Whichever form you land on, two things come first: your articles of incorporation must contain the IRS-required purpose and dissolution clauses (here is why), and you need an EIN (here is the free way to get one). Read the full comparison in Form 1023-EZ vs. Form 1023, or browse all the guides.

The kit picks up where the checker stops

The verdict tells you your form. The $49 Formation Kit generates the documents that go with it — articles with the IRS clauses built in, bylaws, conflict-of-interest policy — and walks your filing field by field, plus your state’s solicitation registration and your first-year compliance calendar.

Get the Formation Kit — $49 one-time

Self-help education and templates. Not legal advice, and we file nothing for you — you file, we guide.