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E-file, use certified mail, or roll the dice
April 14, 2009
As a green 25 year-old staff accountant, I was assigned to deliver a 1040 with a six-figure balance due to a local captain of industry who happened to be the biggest client in the local office of one of the national accounting firms. It was April 15. I was to collect his signature and his check and get the return to the post office.
One of the first things you learn at a national public accounting firm is the importance of covering your backside. After collecting the return and check I went down to the Capitol Square post office and got the returns postmarked "certified mail, return receipt requested." After getting a burger and malt at the late, lamented Stella's, I went back to the office and carefully put the postmarked receipt in the client file.
Two weeks later the partner in charge calls me into his office to show me a penalty notice from the IRS saying the Captain of Industry's return had been filed late. The postmarked receipt kept me from being fired that day, and I got to keep my job when the IRS reversed the penalties after we sent them a copy of the receipt.
Which is a long way of making a short point: document your return filing.
If you paper file at the post office, use Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested. Get the postmarked paper receipt, because the postal service purges its computer records after two years. Certified mail adds $2.70 to the postage; the paper return receipt costs another $2.20. $4.90 isn't usually too much to spend to save your job.
If you use a private carrier, use one of the IRS authorized private delivery services, and hold on to your shipping receipt. Be sure to send it to the proper street delivery address.
If you really want security, e-file. You get delivery confirmation quickly, and you don't have to worry about the mail going astray.
This is our penultimate 2009 filing season tax tip. One more!
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Comments
Certified mail may not do for you what you think it does.
I sent some very important documents by Certified mail, and they were lost. While my receipt proves that I sent SOMETHING, upon contacting the U.S. Post Office, I was told in no uncertain terms that Certified mail is UNTRACEABLE.
In other words, the piece of mail that I sent Certified had no traceable trail, according to the Post Office, and was not only lost, but no one was going to put in any effort to attempt to find it.
Registered Mail, on the other hand, is officially traceable. It's expensive ($12), but will hopefully allow you, or some ambitious postal employee, to ascertain exactly at which point your lost item last "checked in", before it was lost.
That information may cause the postal employees who work at the facility where your item went missing, to spend 30 seconds or so looking around on the floor for it, before they give up and declare it permanently lost.
Posted by: False Security! | April 14, 2009 2:45 PM
No, but apparently that's all the IRS needs...proof that you sent something. It allows you to re-send the return without penalty.
Posted by: M | April 15, 2009 10:16 AM