Schedule E (Form 990 or 990-EZ) 2019
Page 3
General Instructions
Future developments. For the latest information about developments
related to Schedule E (Form 990 or 990-EZ), such as legislation enacted
after the schedule and its instructions were published, go to
www.irs.gov/Form990.
What’s New
Rev. Proc. 2019-22, 2019-22 I.R.B. 1260, modified Rev. Proc. 75-50 to
provide a third method for a private school to satisfy the publicity
requirement in Section 4.03. Accordingly, also answer “Yes” to line 3 if
the organization has publicized its racially nondiscriminatory policy on
its primary publicly accessible Internet homepage at all times during its
tax year in a manner reasonably expected to be noticed by visitors to
the homepage.
Purpose of Schedule
Schedule E (Form 990 or 990-EZ) is used by an organization that files
Form 990 or Form 990-EZ to report information on private schools.
Who Must File
An organization that answered “Yes” on Form 990, Part IV, line 13, or
Form 990-EZ, Part VI, line 48, must complete and attach Schedule E to
Form 990 or Form 990-EZ, as applicable. This means the organization
checked the box on Schedule A (Form 990 or 990-EZ), Public Charity
Status and Public Support, Part I, line 2, because it’s a school.
If an organization isn’t required to file Form 990 or Form 990-EZ but
chooses to do so, it must file a complete return and provide all of the
information requested, including the required schedules.
For Form 990 and Form 990-EZ filers, use Part II if additional space is
needed for explanations.
Specific Instructions
Part I
Relevant parts of Rev. Proc. 75-50, 1975-2 C.B. 587, are given below.
The revenue procedure gives guidelines and recordkeeping
requirements for determining whether private schools that are
recognized as exempt from tax have racially nondiscriminatory policies
toward their students.
Rev. Proc. 2019-22, 2019-22 I.R.B. 1260, modified Rev. Proc. 75-50
to provide a third method for a private school to satisfy the requirement
in Section 4.03.
4.01 Organizational requirements. A school must include a statement
in its charter, bylaws, or other governing instrument, or in a resolution of
its governing body, that it has a racially nondiscriminatory policy as to
students and therefore doesn’t discriminate against applicants and
students on the basis of race, color, and national or ethnic origin.
4.02 Statement of policy. Every school must include a statement of its
racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students in all its brochures and
catalogues dealing with student admissions, programs, and
scholarships. A statement substantially similar to the Notice described
in paragraph (a), subsection 1, section 4.03, below, will be acceptable
for this purpose. Further, every school must include a reference to its
racially nondiscriminatory policy in other written advertising that it uses
as a means of informing prospective students of its programs. The
following references will be acceptable.
The (name) school admits students of any race, color, and national or
ethnic origin.
4.03 Publicity. The school must make its racially nondiscriminatory
policy known to all segments of the general community served by the
school.
1. The school must use one of the following three methods to satisfy
this requirement.
a. The school may publish a notice of its racially nondiscriminatory
policy in a newspaper of general circulation that serves all racial
segments of the community. This publication must be repeated at least
once annually during the period of the school’s solicitation for students
or, in the absence of a solicitation program, during the school’s
registration period. Where more than one community is served by a
school, the school may publish its notice in those newspapers that are
reasonably likely to be read by all racial segments of the communities
that it serves. The notice must appear in a section of the newspaper
likely to be read by prospective students and their families and it must
occupy at least three column inches. It must be captioned in at least 12-
point boldface type as a notice of nondiscriminatory policy as to
students, and its text must be printed in at least 8-point type. The
following notice will be acceptable.
Notice of Nondiscriminatory Policy as to Students
The (name) school admits students of any race, color, national and
ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities
generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It
does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic
origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies,
scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-
administered programs.
b. The school may use the broadcast media to publicize its racially
nondiscriminatory policy if this use makes such nondiscriminatory policy
known to all segments of the general community the school serves. If
this method is chosen, the school must provide documentation that the
means by which this policy was communicated to all segments of the
general community was reasonably expected to be effective. In this
case, appropriate documentation would include copies of the tapes or
script used and records showing that there was an adequate number of
announcements, that they were made during hours when the
announcements were likely to be communicated to all segments of the
general community, that they were of sufficient duration to convey the
message clearly, and that they were broadcast on radio or television
stations likely to be listened to by substantial numbers of members of all
racial segments of the general community. Announcements must be
made during the period of the school’s solicitation for students or, in the
absence of a solicitation program, during the school’s registration
period.
c. The school may display a notice of its racially nondiscriminatory
policy on its primary publicly accessible Internet homepage at all times
during its tax year (excluding temporary outages due to website
maintenance or technical problems) in a manner reasonably expected to
be noticed by visitors to the homepage. The notice used to satisfy the
publicity requirement under 1(a), above, is acceptable. A publicly
accessible homepage is one that does not require a visitor to input
information, such as an email address or a username and password, to
access the homepage. Factors to be considered in determining whether
a notice is reasonably expected to be noticed by visitors to the
homepage include the size, color, and graphic treatment of the notice in
relation to other parts of the homepage, whether the notice is
unavoidable, whether other parts of the homepage distract attention
from the notice, and whether the notice is visible without a visitor having
to do anything other than simple scrolling on the homepage. A link on
the homepage to another page where the notice appears, or a notice
that appears in a carousel or only by selecting a dropdown or by hover
(mouseover) is not acceptable. If a school does not have its own
website, but it has webpages contained in a website, the school must
display a notice of its racially nondiscriminatory policy on its primary
landing page within the website in a manner that satisfies all other
requirements of this subsection 1(c) to use this publication method.
Communication of a racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students
by a school to leaders of racial groups as the sole means of publicity
generally won’t be considered effective to make the policy known to all
segments of the community.
2. The requirements of subsection 1, section 4.03, won’t apply when
one of the following paragraphs applies.
a. If, for the preceding 3 years, the enrollment of a parochial or other
church-related school consists of students at least 75% of whom are
members of the sponsoring religious denomination or unit, the school
may make known its racially nondiscriminatory policy in whatever
newspapers or circulars the religious denomination or unit utilizes in the
communities from which the students are drawn. These newspapers
and circulars may be those distributed by a particular religious
denomination or unit or by an association that represents a number of
religious organizations of the same denomination. If, however, the
school advertises in newspapers of general circulation in the community
or communities from which its students are drawn and paragraphs (b)
and (c) of this subsection aren’t applicable to it, then it must comply
with paragraph (a), subsection 1, section 4.03.