Or so the cliche goes. And for the IRS, it certainly does.
A client filed his tax return on October 2nd. He had a balance due (he had made an extension payment, but he still owed some tax). He paid by having his bank account electronically debited with the filing of his tax return. In today’s mail he received a CP14 notice (dated today) alleging he hadn’t paid his balance due. Yikes!
My client was upset. “Russ, you forgot to have my bank account electronically debited.” No, I didn’t forget, and the return shows his payment being accepted for processing. I had a Tax Information Authorization for my client, so I ran an Account Transcript and it showed a $0 balance. My client was relieved, but there appears to be a systemic IRS issue.
The payment went through on October 2nd, but the IRS posted the tax due first (dated October 22nd) without posting his payment. Yet the payment was made, and my client should have never received this notice. It wasted both of our time for no good reason.
If this were the only such IRS notice I received this year I’d just ignore the issue, but there were two others I received in today’s mail (one I received as I had authorization for my client, and the other that the client forwarded to me). Both clients have $0 balances, so it appears there is a systemic issue of the IRS being a bit too fast in sending out CP14 notices.
Several years ago this was an issue for April filers; the IRS corrected the problem by allowing an additional ‘cycle’ before sending out CP14 notices. I hadn’t seen this issue before for extension filers, but it appears we have a case of deja vu all over again. I reported this to the IRS Systemic Advocacy Management System. If you’re a tax professional and run into this issue I urge to to report it, too.
Tags: CP14