Which states have the most nonprofits losing tax-exempt status

A nonprofit that has to file an annual return with the IRS can miss a year or two and keep its status. Miss the return three years in a row and the law revokes your tax-exempt status on the due date of the third one, with no audit and no hearing. We counted every one of those revocations from 2021 to 2025 and compared each state with the number of organizations there that have to file.

Before the numbers: many of these organizations had already wound down and never told the IRS, and revocation is how the IRS clears them off its books. For many, losing status was paperwork, not wrongdoing.

What we found

1. In five years, 285,573 organizations lost tax-exempt status for missed filings. That's an average of 57,115 a year from 2021 to 2025, or 34.4 of every 1,000 organizations that must file.
2. Georgia's rate is two and a half times Iowa's. The highest rates per 1,000 a year are in Georgia (48.6), Nevada (47.8), Louisiana (44.8), Idaho (44.2) and Florida (42.9). The lowest are in Iowa (19.6), North Dakota (21.8), Montana (22.1), Vermont (23.0) and Nebraska (23.5).
3. Three in four lose status on one day: May 15. It's the due date for every organization whose year ends December 31, so it's when most third missed returns come due. Of the 2021 to 2025 revocations, 74.0% are dated May 15.

More from the data

• By count, the big states lead. California (31,760), Texas (23,873), Florida (19,820), New York (14,347) and Georgia (12,354) had the most organizations lose tax-exempt status from 2021 to 2025. New York's rate, though, is below average (28.1, rank 37 of 51).
• Revocations rose about a third, then eased: from 48,384 in 2021 to 63,771 in 2024 (up 32%), then 56,097 in 2025.
• Social welfare groups, 501(c)(4), lose status more often than charities. They lost it at 53.4 per 1,000 a year, about 1.5 times the rate for 501(c)(3) charities (34.7). Labor and farm groups, 501(c)(5), had the lowest rate of any type with at least 1,000 revocations and 1,000 filers: 15.5. Charities still make up 81% of all revocations, because there are so many of them.
• Youth sports groups lose status more often, and volunteer fire companies less. Among charities whose names say what they do, youth sports groups (Little League, youth soccer and the like) lost status at 1.3 times the charity average. Volunteer fire and EMS companies lost it at less than half the charity average (0.42 times). This is an estimate from names; the IRS list has no field for what an organization does.
• Few come back. About 1 in 9 of the 2021 to 2025 revocations (11.5%) show a reinstatement so far.

Source: IRS Automatic Revocation of Exemption List (revocations posted through September 29, 2026) and IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File (September 8, 2026); Ember analysis.

Every state, ranked

Pick a region to narrow the list, or sort by any column. Each state's name opens its own page.

Per 1,000 a year: organizations that lost tax-exempt status from 2021 to 2025, divided by five, for every 1,000 organizations in the state that must file an annual return (IRS Business Master File, September 2026). Puerto Rico is shown but not ranked: it is a territory, and only 2,120 organizations there must file.

Download the table as a CSV. It has every column, including the number required to file, plus the 2025 numbers and a second rate that counts every organization.

Need one state? One-page summaries for the 10 states with the highest rates, free to print or share (PDF): Georgia, Nevada, Louisiana, Idaho, Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, Maryland and Oklahoma.

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The highest and lowest rates

The 10 highest rates and the 10 lowest: organizations that lost tax-exempt status for every 1,000 required to file, each year from 2021 to 2025. Darker bars are at or above the national rate, and every state is in the table above.

Year by year

Organizations that lost tax-exempt status, by the date it took effect. In 2026 so far, revocations dated January 1 to July 15 are running 12% below the same stretch of 2025, though some may not be posted yet.

Why do nonprofits in some states lose status more often?

Honestly, we don't know, and the IRS files can't tell us. We did test one guess: that nonprofits lose status more often in states with more very small groups, the ones filing the 990-N e-Postcard. There's a link, but it's a loose one. Across the 50 states and DC the correlation is 0.42. On that scale, 1 would mean a state's 990-N share predicts its rate perfectly and 0 would mean no link at all. The share accounts for less than a fifth of the gap between states.

Iowa is the clearest case. There, 70.2% of filers use the 990-N, the second-highest share in the country, and it still has the lowest rate, 19.6. Georgia's share is a little lower (68.3%), and its rate is two and a half times Iowa's: 48.6.

So something else is at work. Three ideas we haven't tested: state annual reports or charity registrations that nudge groups to file with the IRS too, how much local help is nearby (nonprofit associations, community foundations, volunteer accountants), and how easy a state makes it to start a nonprofit in the first place. None of them is proven yet.

What helps

• A spring reminder before May 15. One April note from a state association or community foundation to every small group it knows.
• Free 990-N clinics. The form is short, but the first time is easier with someone sitting next to you.
• Funders who ask. When a funder asks for the latest return or 990-N confirmation at renewal, a missed year shows up while there's still time to catch up.
• A shared calendar reminder. Put the due date where the whole board can see it, not in one person's head, so it survives a change of treasurer.

What this means for your nonprofit

Here's the hopeful part. For most organizations, staying off this list takes one short form a year, filed online.

• File every year, even a quiet one. If your gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less, that's usually the Form 990-N e-Postcard. Bigger organizations file the 990-EZ or 990. All of them are due on the 15th day of the 5th month after your year ends, which is May 15 if your year ends December 31. Not sure which one is yours? The Form 990 finder tells you, and the Form 990 deadline guide has every due date.
• File late rather than not at all. The 990-N can't be extended, but the IRS charges no penalty for filing it late. A late return still counts if it reaches the IRS before the third missed due date. A missing one doesn't.
• Check where you stand. The IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search shows whether an organization is on the revocation list. When your treasurer changes, make sure the new one knows the date and has the login.
• If it already happened, there's a way back. Every route starts with a new exemption application and its fee. Apply within 15 months of the revocation letter (or of the day your group appeared on the IRS list, if that came later), and a group that could have filed the 990-N or 990-EZ, and was never revoked before, can get its status back to the date it was lost. No explanation needed. Other groups need to show reasonable cause. After 15 months, it takes reasonable cause for all three missed years to go back that far. Without it, status starts again on the day the new application is postmarked. The IRS page on having your status reinstated walks through all four routes, and our post on automatic revocation explains what it means day to day.

The Ember tool for this

Ember Compliance

If the deadline keeps sneaking up on you, Ember Compliance builds your filing calendar from a few answers about your organization. Whoever owns a filing gets an email 30 days before it's due, a week before, and on the day. You still do the filing yourself.

How we did this

We took every row of the IRS Automatic Revocation of Exemption List and counted the revocations that took effect from 2021 through 2025: 285,573. Each one is placed in the state on its IRS record. For the rate, we divided by the number of organizations in each state that must file an annual return, from the IRS Business Master File for September 2026 (1,657,891 organizations nationwide, 1,653,803 of them in the 50 states and DC). Churches and others that don't have to file can't lose status this way, so they are left out. We ranked the 50 states and DC. Every headline number was counted a second time with separate code, and the two counts agreed.

Earlier studies

Revocation became automatic under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and the first big wave came in 2010. On the IRS Automatic Revocation of Exemption List today, 377,403 revocations are dated 2010, 274,995 of them May 15. In June 2011, the IRS announced that about 275,000 organizations had automatically lost tax-exempt status, and said it believed the vast majority no longer existed. That August, the Urban Institute's brief Revoked: A Snapshot of Organizations that Lost their Tax-Exempt Status looked at those organizations by type, age and location. This study covers five recent years, 2021 to 2025, and sets each state's count against the number of organizations there that have to file. For what losing status changes for a group, see what happens when a nonprofit loses tax-exempt status.

What the data can't tell you

• Why. The list can't tell an organization that closed from an active one that forgot to file.
• Where the work happens. The state comes from the last address the organization gave the IRS, and that can be an officer's home.
• Every reinstatement. Some reinstatements are missing from the list or not posted yet, so the share that came back is likely a little higher than shown.
• Exact filer counts. The September 2026 count of filers no longer includes the organizations that lost status, which nudges the rate up in states with many revocations. Counting every organization instead, churches included, barely changes the ranking.
• Size and type. The list has no income or activity fields. The youth sports and fire company figures come from names, so they miss groups whose names don't say what they do.

This study reports public IRS data. It is general information, not legal or tax advice. To check a particular organization, use the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search.

Sources: IRS, Automatic Revocation of Exemption List (list last updated September 8, 2026; revocations posted through September 29, 2026; downloaded October 7, 2026); IRS, Exempt Organizations Business Master File extract (posted September 8, 2026; downloaded October 7, 2026); IRS, Form 990-N (e-Postcard) and Annual exempt organization return: due date (read October 9, 2026); IRS, How to have your tax-exempt status reinstated (page updated July 6, 2026; read October 9, 2026); IRS, IR-2011-63, IRS identifies organizations that have lost tax-exempt status (June 8, 2011; read October 16, 2026); Amy Blackwood and Katie Roeger, Urban Institute, Revoked: A Snapshot of Organizations that Lost their Tax-Exempt Status (August 29, 2011; read October 16, 2026). Counts, rates and rankings are Ember's analysis of the IRS files; the charts and the CSV are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page.