September 18, 2020
Jessica L. Jeane
Director of Public Policy and Communications
The National Society of Accountants (NSA) supports relief of all fees and penalties associated with late returns attributable to the CCH Axcess electronic filing (e-filing) service disruption on September 15, 2020, as well as any other relief the IRS deems appropriate for affected taxpayers and practitioners. It is NSA’s understanding that not only were practitioners unable to submit returns through CCH’s e-filing queue during the outage, many also received notices that previously saved files were corrupted.
Accordingly, NSA is aware that Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting has urged the IRS to consider returns received through its system on September 16, 2020, as timely filed. Additionally, Wolters Kluwer has told its users that it will provide a letter supporting the reason for the late filing should return preparers’ clients receive a late filing notice from the IRS.
In response to NSA’s request for information on how the IRS will handle applicable returns received through the CCH Axcess e-filing system, the IRS on September 18 sent NSA the following statement:
IRS statement
“As always, facts and circumstances are important in any penalty determination. The IRS remains flexible in granting penalty relief where taxpayers can demonstrate good-faith efforts in filing their returns.”
IRS Website on Penalty Relief
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The core mission of the National Society of Accountants is to help tax and accounting professionals become more successful.
NSA presents this information in the interest of its members for information purposes only and is not intended to provide, nor should it be relied upon, as legal, tax, or accounting advice.