Thousands of non-profits lose their tax exemptions

Angels for Animals Network fosters about 100 dogs and cats at any given time, which has been the main activity of the Cliffside Park animal rescue organization for the past six years.

Until last month, people who donated to the organization could get a charitable deduction off their federal income taxes. But not now.

Angels for Animals Network is one of 1,274 formerly tax-exempt groups in North Jersey whose exemptions were revoked by the Internal Revenue Service because they missed an Oct. 15 deadline for filing a new tax form required of all small non-profits.

Nearly 8,000 organizations in New Jersey and 275,000 nationwide lost their tax-exempt status. Most are defunct groups, and some are organizations that merged with other non-profits.

But an unknown number are small, functioning charitable groups like Angels for Animals Network which either found out about the new filing requirement too late or not at all.

"I got sick with a very rare disease a couple of years ago and things got behind," said Denise Nazzaro, the organization's vice president. "But I thought everything had been filed."

In fact, Angels for Animals Network did file the new form online.

But according to the group's IRS receipt, it submitted the form on Dec. 16, two months after the deadline.

Gizela Juric, the group's founder and president, said it plans to file a new application to regain its tax-exempt status.

"I devote my life to my animals," she said.

Juric said she shelters about 40 dogs on her farm in Blairstown in Warren County, while about a dozen other volunteers provide foster homes for the remaining animals.

"We work so hard, and we're trying so hard to get money to get a building. My phone rings all the time with calls from people who know of animals that need to be rescued."

Another active non-profit in the area that showed up on the IRS revocation list is the River Vale Volunteer Ambulance Corps. The organization is listed on the emergency services page of the township's website and Police Chief Michael J. McCann confirmed that it continues to provide ambulance services. However, the ambulance corps' own website would not open and no one returned a phone call to its headquarters seeking comment.

The IRS established its Oct. 15 deadline in response to congressional legislation passed in 2007 that affected small non-profits — those with annual revenues of less than $25,000. Until 2007, such groups didn't need to file any annual reports with the IRS. But legislation took effect that year requiring small non-profits to file annual tax returns like their larger counterparts.

SANDY LEONARD SNAPS: Cliffside Park, NJ. October, 2007

I first knew about Marta Curro from her frequent appearances on The Merv Griffin Show when I was in high school and college. Griffin's sidekick, Arthur Treacher, would list the guests during the opening of the evening's program, and if he mentioned Marta's name, I would always stay tuned. "The Gypsy Lady" they called her then, back when she was married to actor Jerry Orbach. Who would have imagined that some 40 years later she and I would become friends…through Nick at whose 60 birthday party I snapped this photo. Always the glamour girl, Marta was wearing these same sunglasses one evening a year later at Christmastime when we went to see her at the Village Nursing Home in New York. (Recuperating from a fall, she was under the mistaken impression that she'd be released on New Year's Day, and when she wasn't, she dialed 911 and announced she was being held hostage. She was thereupon transferred to a ward in nearby St. Vincent's Hospital for “further observation.”) During a happier time, having lunch at her favorite NYC spot, La Luncheonette, I'd asked her why they called her "The Gypsy Lady." "I have no idea," she told me. "Actually there were a lot worse things they could have called me back then.