Form 1023-EZ is the IRS's streamlined application for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. It exists so small nonprofits -- the kind run by a handful of volunteers, not a legal team -- don't have to fill out a 40-page form to get recognized as a charity.
Who it's for
Form 1023-EZ is built for small, straightforward nonprofits: a local youth sports league, a small community garden, a scholarship fund, a neighborhood arts group. If your organization expects to bring in $50,000 or less a year and holds $250,000 or less in assets, you're in the target range.
How it's different from a "normal" application
Where the full Form 1023 asks for detailed written descriptions of your activities, multi-year financial projections, and supporting documents, Form 1023-EZ is mostly a series of checkboxes and short answers: your organization's structure, your mission, your officers and directors, and your expected finances. There's an eligibility worksheet you complete first to confirm you actually qualify.
Where you actually file it
This is the part that surprises people: Form 1023-EZ isn't a PDF you print and mail. It's an online-only form (an "eForm") submitted through pay.gov, the federal government's payment and forms portal. You create a pay.gov account, answer the form's questions on their site, pay the IRS user fee, and submit electronically.
What happens after you submit
The IRS reviews the application -- usually faster than the full Form 1023, since there's less to review -- and either approves your exempt status, asks a follow-up question, or determines you weren't actually eligible for the EZ version (in which case you'd need to file the full Form 1023 instead).
How EasyNonprofitFiling.com fits in
We're not a law firm, and we don't file anything on pay.gov for you. What we do is run you through a guided questionnaire that mirrors the actual eForm, check your answers against the eligibility rules before you pay anything, and hand you a field-by-field answer key so that when you sit down at pay.gov, you're copying answers in rather than figuring out what each question is really asking.