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Verifying 501(c)(3) Status When a Vendor Isn’t Listed in IRS Search
November 24, 2025
Q. Recently, our organization received an IRS Form W-9 with a federal tax classification of "Other - 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Typically, our practice is to validate the entity is tax exempt using the IRS "Tax Exempt Organization Search" tool; however, this entity does not appear. Do we have any other due diligence to verify the legitimacy of this entity's exemption status, or can we assume the W-9 designation is correct?
A.
(Answered by IOFM's third-party tax expert)
The rules relating…
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