The ruling, which provides questions and answers about the reporting and disclosure requirements, follows up on a law passed by Congress in July that created a new set of rules for political organizations described in section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Under the law, most political organizations will be required to publicly disclose information about their organization, contributors, expenditures and other information.

The ruling, which is based on feedback received on a draft version of the ruling released in August, addresses concerns regarding the burden on state and local political organizations that are required to file Form 8872 and also file with state election authorities.

The statute expressly provides an exception for organizations that file with the Federal Election Commission as political committees, but does not provide a similar exception for organizations merely because they file with state election authorities, the IRS said.

However, the IRS said it recognizes the potential burden imposed by the statute and plans to ease that burden by working to provide an electronic filing system for the Form 8872.

To ease the burden on political organizations, the IRS clarified in the revenue ruling that organizations are not required to provide copies of Form 8871 and Form 8872 to persons making requests in person or in writing so long as they provide the IRS Web site address to the requester. The public can view the submitted forms at www.irs.gov.

The text of the revenue ruling will be published Oct. 30 in the Internal Revenue Bulletin as Revenue Ruling 2000-49, I.R.B. 2000-44.

-- SmartPros News Staff

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