IRS Notice 2019-09 provides guidance intended to help “applicable tax-exempt employers” determine whether compensation paid to their most highly compensated employees will be subject to the 21 percent excise tax imposed under Code Section 4960. Notice 2019-09 is indeed helpful to those of us who have to interpret the provisions of Code Section 4960. But tax-exempt employers subject to Code Section 4960 have serious work to do in order to comply with these relatively new rules, and some tax-exempt employers will be disappointed in the results. (In general, compensation paid by a Section 501(c)(3) organization will be subject to the requirements of Code Section 4960, so we will simply reference tax-exempt employers for these purposes.)