wherer to fmail federal income tax returns

#Wherer to fmail federal income tax returns full#

The IRS argued, however, that the facts in Anderson were distinguishable, because in that decision, there was testimony from someone that didn't have a vested interest in the case. To illustrate, in Anderson, a taxpayer's friend credibly testified that she saw the taxpayer bring an envelope containing her tax return into the post office, only to exit without it, establishing the presumption that the return had been mailed. This practice, Morgan maintained, allowed him to go his entire career without having dropped off a client package with insufficient postage or an incorrect address.įrom there, the brothers cited prior Tax Court precedent, which established that a taxpayer can prove mailing through extrinsic evidence such as credible statements, and if they do so, the burden switches back to the IRS to prove that the Service didn't receive the mailed items. If you're wondering why Morgan would remember these details ten years after purportedly mailing the letter, the CPA stated in his deposition that it was 'his practice' to always look at a package on his way into the post office before dropping it off.

the envelope was addressed to a Fresno, CA service center, with a return address of Morgan's business location.

glancing at the postage and seeing 40 cents (the actual postage at that time for first-class mail was 39 cents),.

taking the envelope to the post office on the deadline day,.

And remember the extensions Morgan did, at least according to his deposition, in which Morgan recalled:

#Wherer to fmail federal income tax returns full#

To that end, the brothers argued that they were very important clients of Morgan's, and thus he was likely to remember filing their extensions - despite them being merely two of nearly 250 clients, and despite the date at issue being a full decade before the court hearing. Having failed to do that, however, the Laidlaw brothers were tasked by the Tax Court with providing some proof of mailing.

Just file via certified mail, and keep a record of your mailing. The simplest answer, of course, is to remove all doubt. Who is to blame? What burden does a taxpayer have to prove that they mailed the forms by the required date, and that any problem with the process began after it left his hands? Each year, many extensions and returns get filed via the mail. The Laidlaw brothers disagreed with the assessed penalties, placing the entire weight of their defense in the testimony and memory of Javier Morgan, who continuously professed that he did in fact mail the extensions, and that it wasn't his - or his clients' fault - that the IRS hadn't received them.Īs you can imagine, this scenario is not unique in the tax world. As a result, the Service assessed a late filing penalty under Section 6651, asserting that the returns were six months late. There was just one problem: upon receiving the returns, the IRS noticed that it had never received the extensions. Six months later, Morgan finalized the returns and filed them prior to the extended due date of October 16, 2006. His long day finally finished, Morgan took the extensions to the post office personally - as was his habit - and dropped them off, opting not to send the package by certified mail. He had in his possession both brothers' Forms W-2, as well as detail of a few other sources of income, but with the hour growing late and the deadline looming, Morgan chose to simply prepare blank extensions: showing neither an anticipated tax liability nor any estimated payments or withholding.

As day turned to night on Ap- the due date for 2005 tax returns - Morgan found himself in a position all too familiar to the tax prep industry - he didn't have enough information necessary to complete the returns for the Laidlaw brothers, and thus would have to request an automatic six-month extension by filing Form 4868.