The Internal Revenue Service revoked today the tax exemption status of 1,524 nonprofit organizations in Hawaii, many of them believed to be defunct.

 The Hawaii groups are among 275,000 organizations across the country that automatically lost their tax-exempt status because they did not file legally required annual reports for three consecutive years, the IRS said.

"During the past several years, the IRS has gone the extra mile to help make tax-exempt groups aware of their legal filing requirement and allow them additional time to file," IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said in a statement. "Still, we realize there may be some legitimate organizations, especially very small ones, that were unaware of their new filing requirement. We are taking additional steps for these groups to maintain their tax-exempt status without jeopardizing their operations or harming their donors."

The IRS said there are steps organizations can take to apply for reinstatement of their tax-exempt status. 

A list of organizations that have lost their tax-exempt status and information on reinstatement is available at http://1.usa.gov/iCJXYE.