For Tax Year 2017, e-file closes on Nov. 17; After that, disaster victims, others need to file on paper

WASHINGTON —The Internal Revenue Service today reminded people, including those in disaster areas, who want to file a 2017 tax return electronically to do so by Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018. Filing of paper tax returns will remain available after that date.

IRS Modernized e-file, the system that processes electronically-filed individual returns, will shut down after Nov. 17, enabling the IRS to perform annual maintenance and to reprogram the system for the upcoming 2019 tax-filing season.

As a result, any taxpayer needing to file after Nov. 17 will need to do so on paper.

While the vast majority of individuals have already filed their tax year 2017 federal tax returns, victims of Hurricane Michael, Hurricane Florence and other recent disasters qualify for an additional extension. This includes taxpayers who live, work or have a business in a federally declared disaster area, have a U.S. tax filing obligation and had previously obtained a valid 6-month extension of time to file their federal tax return. Extended deadlines vary by locality and range from Dec. 17, 2018, to Feb. 28, 2019. Currently, parts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin and the Northern Mariana Islands qualify.

Note:  TY 2016 and TY2015 returns will also have to be paper filed during the cut-over period

IRS will conduct maintenance on several electronic systems, including e-Services, over the Veterans Day weekend beginning Sunday, Nov. 11 at 8:00 a.m. ET through Monday, Nov. 12 at 6:00 p.m. ET.

Impact:

We will not be transmitting returns or receiving acknowledgements during this extended maintenance period.

• CALIFORNIA – 4/18/18

We received the following message from California:

“Greetings,

The IRS has allowed an additional day to file and pay taxes following IRS system issues that surfaced early on the April 17 tax deadline.  Because California taxpayers must generally complete their federal return before their California return can be filed, FTB will follow federal announcement IR-2018-100, April 17, 2018.  Individuals and businesses with a filing or payment due date of April 17 will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18th.  Taxpayers do not need to do anything to receive this extra time.

California provides an automatic six-month extension to October 15^th available to taxpayers who need additional time to file. Any tax due must still be paid by April 18^th.”

• IDAHO – 4/18/18

We received the following message from Idaho:

“BOISE, IDAHO — April 18, 2018 — The Idaho State Tax Commission is providing taxpayers an extra day to file and pay their 2017 income taxes. Taxpayers have until the end of Wednesday, April 18 to file and pay their income taxes without penalty. 

The IRS announced a one-day extension for filing federal returns due to problems with its e-filing system for much of the April 17 tax deadline. This also affected e-filing for Idaho returns. As a result, Idaho is following the extended federal deadline. The extended deadline applies to returns and payments filed by paper or electronically.”

• NEBRASKA – 4/18/18

We received the following message from Nebraska:

“On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it is providing taxpayers an additional day to file and pay their federal income taxes. Income tax filers with a filing or payment due date of April 17, 2018, will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18, 2018, to file and pay their federal individual income taxes. The Nebraska Department of Revenue is required by law to follow the federal due dates. Therefore, the deadline for Nebraska individual income tax returns and payments has also been extended to April 18, 2018″.

• OHIO – 4/18/18

We received the following message from Ohio:

“This email is to advise you that Ohio’s error code OHIND-046 “You are attempting to file an IT1040 return after the filing deadline, but did not indicate if you are filing federal extension form 4868.” was issued yesterday in error.  Users should not have been required to answer the question until today, the day after the filing deadline.

Impacted users should resubmit their Ohio returns and provide a yes or no answer to the question to indicate if they filed a federal extension.  A “no” (or false) answer will be accepted without penalty for returns filed today, or within the 5 day perfection period for rejected returns.  After today, a yes or no answer will still be required and accepted with standard consequences for late filing.

Ohio will be following the IRS and extending the due date to file and pay from 4/17 to 4/18.  However, even with the extended deadline, the federal extension question must be answered today.

We apologize for the inconvenience, please respond to this email with any questions.”

• SOUTH CAROLINA – 4/18/18

We received the following message from South Carolina:

“Following system outages, the IRS is allowing taxpayers an additional day (until April 18) to file federal income tax returns. The SCDOR will also allow taxpayers this additional day to file state income tax returns. As in the past, South Carolina’s electronic filing incentive gives individuals until May 1 to file state income tax returns electronically and pay any balance due without penalty.”

• UTAH – 4/18/18

We received the following message from Utah:

“The IRS announced a one-day extension for filing federal returns due to computer problems at the IRS. Similarly, the Utah State Tax Commission announced that it will allow an additional day for taxpayers to file and pay their 2017 state income taxes. Taxpayers will have until 11:59pm on Wednesday, April 18th, to both pay and file their state returns without penalty.”

IRS  Provides Additional Day to File and Pay for Taxpayers through Wednesday, April 18;

IRS processing systems back online

WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service announced today that it is providing taxpayers an additional day to file and pay their taxes following system issues that surfaced early on the April 17 tax deadline. Individuals and businesses with a filing or payment due date of April 17 will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18. Taxpayers do not need to do anything to receive this extra time.

The IRS encountered system issues Tuesday morning. Throughout the system outage, taxpayers were still able to file their tax returns electronically through their software providers and Free File. Taxpayers using paper to file and pay their taxes at the deadline were not affected by the system issue.

“This is the busiest tax day of the year, and the IRS apologizes for the inconvenience this system issue caused for taxpayers,” said Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter. “The IRS appreciates everyone’s patience during this period. The extra time will help taxpayers affected by this situation.”

The IRS advised taxpayers to continue to file their taxes as normal Tuesday evening – whether electronically or on paper. Automatic six-month extensions are available to taxpayers who need additional time to file can visit https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/extension-of-time-to-file-your-tax-return.

Update 6:11 PM ET

We are working through the backlog of e-files that we received while the IRS MeF system was in the status of non-operational.  We are processing these in First In, First Out order.

It is important to note that we utilize the electronic postmark when we submit the e-files to the IRS.

What does this mean?  It means that we use the date and time that you electronically submit the return to us.

Why is this important?  The MeF system uses the electronic postmark for processing to determine timely filed returns.

Update 4:53 PM ET

The IRS MeF system has concluded testing and is now Operational.  We should have all  of our systems back up and running automatically again within the next 30 minutes.  At that time we will begin sending the backlog of e-files.  Please note that this is going to take hours to process the backlog of e-files we have been holding during the IRS MeF outage.

As all vendors start working through their backlog of returns, there may be additional delays in receiving acks from the IRS due to the load on their system.

Update 3:05 pm ET

The IRS MeF system is still in the status of Non-Operational.  They are diligently working to get their systems operational.  Again, we encourage you to continue to transmit returns to us as normal throughout the day.

This outage is also impacting IRS Direct Pay

Update 1:20 pm ET

Just a reminder that the IRS MeF system is still in the status of Non-Operational.  We strongly recommend that you continue to transmit returns to us as normal throughout the day.  We will transmit the returns once the IRS MeF system has a status of “Operational”.

We anticipate that there will be a significant number of e-files transmitted to the IRS from all software vendors once their site is operational.  They will need time to process through these e-files, as well as, make the state returns available for the states to pick up for processing.

Update 11:00 am ET

The IRS MeF system is still Non-Operational.  This outage is also impacting the following IRS Systems:

• Where’s my Refund
• Transcripts

Original Blog Post

The IRS just issued a notification regarding their MeF system.  They are experiencing an outage and are diligently working to resolve it.

How does this impact you?

This will cause a delay in us having the ability to successfully send e-files to the IRS and will cause a delay in any acknowledgement that we have not received from the IRS.

Once the IRS system is back online, all vendors will be pushing e-files through the system, which may cause a potential backlog in acknowledgements.

Should I continue to send returns?

Yes, we encourage you to send returns throughout the day.  We DO NOT recommend that you hold them until the end of your business day.

Scenario:  The return was prepared for taxpayer/spouse whose between the age of 25 and 64 with Earned Income, however the IRS rejected the return for the following:

IRS reject:  Reject Code IND-158
Message If ‘EarnedIncomeCreditAmt’ in the return has a non-zero value and Schedule EIC (Form 1040A or 1040) is not present, then the Primary or Spouse must be at least 25 but less than 65 years old.
Data Value XX

Why did it get rejected?  The IRS master file has a date of birth on file for rejected person that puts the age out of the above range.

Solution:  The taxpayer/spouse will need to contact the Social Security Administration to determine what they have on file for the SSN and then request the information be corrected and/or updated in the IRS system.

The IRS released a Quick Alert titled, “Extended Maintenance Window for both MeF ATS and Production Environments”.

“The MeF maintenance build window is being extended on Sunday, March 18, 2018. Both ATS and Production systems will be unavailable from 12:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. Eastern.  The build will deploy critical system updates.

Thank you in advance for refraining from accessing the MeF Systems during this period.”

This means that any returns e-filed on Sunday, March 18th from 12am-11am ET will not be transmitted to the IRS until after their maintenance window has closed.

MA DOR released a message on Monday, March 12th at 11:35am ET stating, “If you have been incorrectly rejected by reject code F1-0141, please resubmit the return”. If your site has any MA returns rejected with this code, MA has requested they be resubmitted for processing.