What will be the backlog of mail for the IRS when they return to work? There’s no way to know but as I’ve said in previous posts, the government shut down does not operate as an extension of any statutory deadline. You must meet your deadline, even if the IRS doesn’t process your filing upon receipt. I was asked how the IRS will know your filing date. The answer is the postmark controls. I was also asked whether, in the face of a literal mountain of letters, whether the IRS might just throw them in the trash. Well, there is historical precedent for such a thing. In the late 1980s, when they were processing tax returns by hand, employees couldn’t keep up with management’s production quotas. It came to light that in the Philadelphia returns processing center, employees were stuffing unprocessed tax returns in the ceiling tiles to make it appear they were meeting their quotas. Many thousands of citizens received late filing penalties only because IRS employees effectively threw their returns in the trash. The only sure way to protect yourself is to use certified or priority mail with tracking to prove your mailing date.
