i’m posting this for any other church planters who realize they don’t know how to do this stuff. i spent the day trying to get an ein so that tapestry can start the process of getting a checking account. about half this morning was spent going through the online process for acquiring a number. the problem with this was that it requires a physical address. tapestry doesn’t have a physical address – part of the reason for this is because we don’t want the burden and focus removing aspects of a building. the online version requires a physical address. know that we’re not the first church to ever do this i knew there had to be a way so i searched all over the website. i found nothing.
so the second line of attack was to try my bank. i love the workers at our bank (associated bank). they are always very helpful. a fellow kiwanis is the manager of our local bank and i thought she might could help. she said she new exactly what to do because they did the all the time for local small businesses. we hit the same problem. after an hour and a half of trying we all decided to try again later.
the third line of attack was to call the ein phone number. i prefer to do things online whenever possible. i usually find that calling a government bureaucracy just ends up with me being lead through the same website info by someone who doesn’t care. i was wrong with the ein phone line. the representative i spoke with was nice and extremely helpful. 13 minutes and 53 seconds after the i initiated the phone call tapestry had its ein/tax id number.
who would have thought that i would be singing the praises of the irs?
wonder of wonders!
anyhow if you are planting a church, especially one without a physical address, just call the irs phone line for ein’s (1-800-829-4933) and skip the website.