In any given year, a person is likely to send one or more of a fairly standard variety of items to the IRS. tax returns, payments, responses to inquiries and refund requests are the most frequent lists, but certainly not exhaustive. I’ve even met a few people who have sent “thank you notes” to IRS employees who seem to have gone above and beyond to help them. That said, how do you know the IRS actually received what you sent? This is not an idle question, as the IRS’s failure to timely receive some of these items can result in serious problems for a taxpayer, ranging from penalties to significant time and money spent to fix a problem. so let’s look at the ways things are shipped.
the irs accepts very little “electronically”, such as over the internet. however, the system is increasingly moving towards electronic submission of business payments through a system known as eftps, as well as all returns. when a return or payment is submitted through these systems, a receipt is generated, and only an idiot would fail to make a hard copy of that receipt.
For people who don’t use those systems, there are a number of indicators we can rely on. For example, when you file a return claiming a refund, you know it was received when the refund check arrives. If you send a payment to the IRS by check, you know the IRS has received it when it clears your bank. by the way, you don’t necessarily know that if you send a cashier’s check. When you submit a return showing tax due, you know it was received when you receive a bill. Unfortunately, those systems themselves don’t tell you “when” the IRS received them.
There are severe penalties for not submitting certain documents on time. If you miss a deadline, such as the deadline to file your tax return, you could face a penalty of 5% per month or late payments of no less than ½% per month (both with a maximum of 25% ). or loss of collection due process hearing rights if a response to a final notice is not served within the 30 days required by law. Fortunately, section 7502 of the Internal Revenue Code provides a very reliable means of addressing this problem. It’s known as the “timely submission, timely submission” rule. If you can prove that something was sent to the IRS before the due date, such as a return, it is considered “received” on the day it was sent, even if it was actually received several days later. this is true for returns, protests, claims, and many other items. but that begs the question “how do you prove it was shipped on time?”
Under that statute, if you send it by certified or registered mail, and you have that proof of delivery on hand, you will have virtually infallible evidence that the item was sent to the IRS when it was actually sent. People who forgo the slight additional cost of certified mail with a return receipt are gambling a lot more than the simple out-of-pocket cost involved. if you don’t like the united states postal service, sending documents by federal express or ups will still qualify. Using priority mail, a certificate of posting, an express mail receipt, delivery confirmation, and signature confirmation may seem like likely candidates for the same treatment, but the IRS has refused to accept them as proof of timely delivery as does certified or certified mail on the grounds that Congress has not authorized it to do so. seems like a flimsy reason to this writer, but it’s not something to argue about when certified mail is available.
one last comment: never send more than one item (other than a cover letter, check and return, which is like an “item”) in the same envelope. The writer has heard of people claiming to have sent two or more tax returns or other documents in the same envelope. When they were lucky, the irs “received” all three and acted on them individually. In other situations, at most one was recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, and the taxpayer was left to discuss how he sent the others.
Again, keep in mind that the cost of a single mailing of a single item is much cheaper than the time and expense required to “unpack” if the IRS claims you didn’t receive something. there are times to be thrifty, and times when doing so is “a penny wise and a pound foolish.”