Amended Return and Postmark Date

Factual Questions
1

The quick ‘n’ dirty: Is there any way for me to determine the date on which my amended federal tax return, sent by my accountant, was postmarked or actually received by the IRS (apart from asking my accountant)?

Background: Had new accountant do taxes in mid-March, which were e-filed. A couple days later, I noticed errors in the return so it my accountant corrected the errors and re-filed an amended return, which they said had to be filed by mail rather than e-filed. That happened in late March.

End of June: I check online at this site:

and find that my return has not been received - they have no record. I email my accountant who is out of town, and she says she’ll check into it.

July 1: Accountant says not to worry, it often takes several months, for amended returns to be processed.

July 8: My amended return is listed as “received” on the website shown above on 7/8/2013.

The site says it can take up to 3 weeks from the date they receive it to show it as “received” and up to 12 weeks to process.

I find it an amazing coincidence that for 3+ months after it was supposedly sent in, the IRS had no record of it and doesn’t list it as received and then about 2-3 weeks after I inquire about it with my accountant, it is suddenly “received.” I suspect my accountant did not file it when they said they would and realized their error when I asked why it wasn’t showing up on the federal website and they promptly submitted it.

However, it’s not an accusation I want to lay on my accountant if I can figure out the truth of the matter some other way.

Unfortunately, the IRS phone system was virtually no help, telling me they were too busy to help and asking that I call back.

Any ideas on how to find the postmark or other date indicator? (If it wasn’t mailed until June, would the date on the return have to be updated or could it still be submitted with a March date on the actual form?)

Does this sound fishy to anyone more in the know than me? Any advice without (unnecessarily) antagonizing or accusing my accountant?

2

My accountant is sitting here in front of me, he says, your accountant probably screwed up.

3

Since your accountant is there (maybe I’m too late), any ideas on how to determine it without straight-up asking? (Thanks, by the way.)

4

The timing was suspicious, but 1040X returns do take time - they’re not a priority, even more so if it were during the tax season. If she mailed it when you said so, 7 days does seem awful fast for a government agency to get it! I think, not evidence of laziness, but sounds like there’s other reasons to worry about your return?

5

Yeah, 7 days does seem fast, although 3 months seems exceedingly slow.

And yes, I need to get a new accountant (or start doing them myself).

6

From an IRS website:

And…

Those quotes are from this page - 3.10.72 Receiving, Extracting, and Sorting | Internal Revenue Service

So, reading that, it seems the form should have been date stamped when it was received - if I’m reading it right. And the envelope, with it’s post office date stamp, should be retained and attached to the form.

They seem to take dating mail seriously. Now, whether you can actually get them to send you a copy of the envelope and form…good luck with that.

7

I know that copies of tax returns requested via form 4806 will include the IRS’s copy of the outside, and also show their stamp that it was received. There is a charge for this service and it takes a long time, so it’s probably not worth it for the OP.

The IRS is quite behind right now in processing these returns. An amended return I sent March 27th for a client was received April 1, not processed until June 27, and the IRS doesn’t expect to mail the refund until next week. (And my client called me on June 26th to check on progress, so doesn’t that timing look convenient?)

While it can take up to three weeks for a return to be marked as received, the date it gets marked with will be the original date, not when they marked it. (In other words, if they received the return on 4/1, it might be 4/22 before they show it received. But on 4/22, they’ll show the received date as 4/1.)

So… this sounds to me like the accountant did forget to mail in the return until they were reminded about it.

8

I have to disagree with the people who say your accountant screwed up; the Where’s My Amended Return site is just really inaccurate. For a while it said my return was received and waiting to be processed, and now every time I check it says there’s no record that I sent one! If you Google it, you’ll see that lots of people have the same problem. I mean it’s possible that your accountant did mess up, but you’d have to call the IRS to get accurate information, the Where’s My Amended Return site is totally useless.

9

Yes, it is date stamped and saved. However, I don’t think that info is available to the public. And. OP- what of it? Either you trust them or not. If not, get a new one.