So You Want to Be Tax-Exempt

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(Please answer all that apply and all that don't)

How do you plan to qualify for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status?

    I plan to form a cult.

Describe the principal activities of your organization.

    Brainwashing. Soliciting money under false pretenses. Affixing to windshields flyers cleverly designed to look like parking tickets.

Do you plan to solicit donations?

    Not exactly.

If you answered no to the preceding question, how do you plan to raise funds?

    Well, much like a bank, I plan to raise interest rates arbitrarily and to rake in late fees, overdraft fees, transaction fees, incoming wire fees, "convenience fees,"  and fees for using other cults, etc.  Also, bake sales.

What services to you plan to provide?

See answer to the preceding question.   

Will you have physical office-space?

What do you mean "physical?" I have one of those thingys that you squeeze to keep your knuckles flexible.  Is that what you're talking about?

How will you advertise your services?

Flyers on windshields.  Haven't you been listening to a thing I said?

How many employees do you expect to have during the next 12 months?

Employees?  You mean like "volunteers?" If you call them "volunteers," then, lawfully, you don't have to pay them, do you?

Do you expect to have employees for whom you will make withholdings?

Oh yes.  I plan to withhold from all of them.

Do you expect to solicit goods or services from outside the United States?

Only from Lichtenstein.  But that's practically like the 51st state, c'mon.

Will your organization engage in wagering?

You mean like playing the stock market with social security funds? Or making such an enormous volume of sub-prime loans that Iceland goes bankrupt? Or inventing "credit default swaps?" No nothing like that.  OK.  Maybe a little Bingo now and again.

Will your organization be affiliated with an organized religion?

Define "organized."

Is there anything else you would like the IRS to consider in ruling on your application for tax-exempt status?

" I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..."

-- James Madison

Now James Madison was a very great man.  In fact, he practically wrote the entire Constitution by himself.  With a crappy quill pen.  Plus, he was on the $5,000 bill.  $5,000! Can you imagine if Yip Harburg were on the $5,000 bill?  He would have written: "Buddy, Can You Spare $5,000?" And who walks around with that kind of change?

Oh please, please, please make me tax-exempt, Dear IRS.

You won't regret it.

I'm trying to create good cult jobs right here in America.

  If you don't make me tax-exempt, I'll have to relocate to the Caymen Islands, taking all my "volunteers" with me.

That's all I'm saying.