Last night, more than seven months after the end of the 2nd Quarter of 2006 and more than four months after the end of the 3rd Quarter of 2006, corrected IRS disclosure Forms 8872 describing Unity08′s contributions and expenditures are finally available at the IRS disclosure website. Unity08 incorrectly filed these forms on paper, rather than electronically as the IRS requires for organizations the size of Unity08, handily slowing the pace of disclosure down. You can review the revised 2nd Quarter and 3rd Quarter Form 8872 reports to the IRS, correcting a large number of reporting errors in the previous forms, for yourself.
Some important clarifications are made possible by these Unity08 reports. One clarification — which Unity08 could have made months ago with a 2-minute message — is that the 2002 reporting dates of a number of donations contained on Unity08′s 2nd Quarter report (its first financial disclosure) were simple typographical errors in reporting, with actual dates being in the year 2006.
A more consequential clarification: As with the 4th Quarter report by Unity08 to the IRS, in each of the new, corrected 2nd and 3rd Quarter reports to the IRS there exists one contribution, and one expenditure, each with a relatively large dollar amount. Each of those is given the name “Withheld” and is located at the bottom of the relevant IRS Schedule, or at the last day of the relevant Quarter, or both. Placed in context, it becomes clear that these are not inappropriately huge contributions by (or expenditures to) one individual. Instead, they are the sum of all contributions beneath $200, and all expenditures beneath $500. This reflects a new reporting requirement by the IRS.
In this regard, I have been mistaken in my assumption that these particular lines in Schedules A and B reflect single contributions. It’s important to promptly correct this impression, and so I have added a correction in boldface to the static location of my questions to Unity08.
This is an important realization because it changes the nature of what we can determine about Unity08′s contribution profile. I’ll be writing more about this soon.
