Treasury report: 1.6 million US charities

A new report from the Inspector General of the Treasury reveals that the IRS does a bad job at policing connections between terrorist groups and the (few) U.S. charities that support them. This is kind of old news... what I found interesting was that we finally have some updated stats on how many charities there are in the US. According to the Chicago Tribune,

The report said that in fiscal year 2006 there were about 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations, excluding churches, with $2.4 trillion in assets and $1.2 trillion in annual revenue. In tax year 2003, the latest year figures were available, these organizations filed about 300,000 returns subject to review for possible terrorist connections.

1.6 million charities and $2.4 trillion in assets... no wonder my client's app with the IRS is taking forever to process!