A Form 990 appears to be a document filed to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by tax-exempt organisations.

As stated on the IOC’s Form 990 filing for 2021, they are open to public inspection.

The copy that initially made its way to me seems to have come via Pro Publica, a New York-based investigative journalism concern.

An explanatory note above the Form states that "tax returns filed by nonprofit organizations are public records."

It goes on: "The Internal Revenue Service releases them in two formats: page images and raw data in XML.

"The raw data is more useful, especially to researchers, because it can be extracted and analyzed more easily.

"The pages below are a reconstruction of a tax document using raw data from the IRS."

I was subsequently able to locate an IRS search tool and used it successfully to download older Form 990 filings.

The most recent US document is basically a re-presentation of information already published in the IOC’s 2021 financial statements.

The figures are not identical, presumably because accounting conventions used in different countries are themselves not identical.

But they seem to marry up pretty well: the financial statements put 2021 revenue at $4.16 billion (£3.44 billion/€4 billion) and the annual surplus for the year when the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics took place at $843.8 million (£697.8 million/€805 million); the Form 990 puts revenue at $4.06 billion (£3.36 billion/€3.87 billion) and “revenue less expenses” at $856.8 million (£708.6 million/€817.4 million).

Having digested the lengthy Form 990, there are two areas that I think are worth highlighting.

The first concerns compensation.

Unless I have missed something, the IOC financial statements I have scrutinised in detail in the past keep things general when it comes to senior management compensation.

The 2021 statements, for example, disclose that the salaries and short term benefits of members of the executive management totalled $13.95 million (£11.5 million/€13.3 million) in 2021 and $11.65 million (£9.6 million/€11.1 million) in 2020.

Their post-employment benefits in 2021 amounted to $1.63 million (£1.35 million/€1.56 million) in 2021 and $1.61 million (£1.33 million/€1.54 million) in 2020.

The Form 990 goes into far more detail.

In Schedule J it appears to give the base compensation, bonus and incentive compensation, other reportable compensation, retirement and other deferred compensation and non-taxable benefits for “Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees and Highest Compensated Employees”.

Director general Christophe De Kepper’s base compensation, for example, is put at $764,134 (£631,938/€728,984).

His bonus and incentive compensation is given as $469,229 (£388,052/€447,644) and the total, once the other three columns are added in, as $1,426,382 (£1,179,618/€1,360,768).

Nobody else topped the one-million-dollar mark, though chief operating officer Lana Haddad’s total is put at $920,089 (£760,914/€877,765).

Going through a few other instantly recognisable names, Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi’s total is put at $706,869 (£584,581/€674,353), sports director Kit McConnell’s at $699,712 (£578,662/€667,525) and medical and scientific director Richard Budgett’s as $529,427 (£437,836/€505,073).

It was inevitable, given the accelerating pace of world events, that the IOC would come to rely increasingly on full-time employees, as opposed to the IOC members themselves, who are volunteers, albeit volunteers with excellent travel, accommodation and indemnity arrangements.

But the wealth of detail in the Form 990 somehow brings home more emphatically that good management costs money.

The other point of interest to emerge from the US document concerns where the IOC spends the money it generates.

Regular readers may recognise this as a particular bugbear of mine, so I was pleased to find a straightforward breakdown of where the IOC directed more than $1.9 billion (£1.57 billion/€1.8 billion) of non-US grants in 2021.

More than half of the total - $1.045 billion (£864 million/€997 million) - went to East Asia and the Pacific, not surprising given that the Summer Games was staged in Tokyo and the Winter Games was about to be staged in Beijing.

The bulk of the remainder - $745.7 million (£616.7 million/€711.4 million) – went to “Europe (including Iceland and Greenland)”, which did surprise me at first glance.

North America’s share was $35.5 million (£29.4 million/€33.9 million) - although this was spending outside the US, to which should be added $299.5 million (£247.7 million/€285.7 million) given to the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC).

This left around $80 million (£66 million/€76 million) to be split around the other regions, as follows: Russia "and the Newly Independent States" $29.3 million (£24.2 million/€28 million); Sub-Saharan Africa $19.1 million (£15.8 million/€18.2 million); Middle East and North Africa $13.85 million (£11.45 million/€13.2 million); South America $9.95 million (£8.2 million/€9.5 million); and Central America and the Caribbean $7.1 million (£5.9 million/€6.8 million).

By way of comparison, the Form 990 indicates that the IOC spent just over $28 million (£23.2 million/€26.7 million) with London-based advertising and consulting agency Essence Global, listed as its highest-compensated independent contractor in 2021.

On reflection, I think some of Europe’s $745.7 million may end up in other regions.

This is on the basis that most of the International Sports Federations that contributed to Tokyo 2020 are Europe-based; I suspect therefore that the bulk of the $540 million (£446.6 million/€515 million) sent by the IOC to these International Federations post-Tokyo 2020will be in that Europe total, even if individual International Federations use a portion of it ultimately for development or event-linked purposes outside their home continent.