Tax question: do I need to wait for a prior year return to be accepted before filing a later year?

Factual Questions
1

I was seriously ill for quite some time, and I got behind on dealing with financial matters. As such, I had outstanding tax returns needed for both 2011 and 2012. I had refunds coming, so I didn’t need to worry about any penalties.

I finished 2011 last week and, as it’s too late to e-file, I sent the return off in the mail on Saturday. I’ve now finished 2012 as well, but I can e-file that one. Is it permissible to do so now or should I wait? 2012 of course uses information from my 2011 return, so I didn’t want to screw anything up.

2

The short answer is that you don’t have to wait.

Sometimes, it’s worth waiting. For example, if 2011 has a refund that you want applied to 2012, there may be a chain of letters from the IRS until they finally get everything processed and figured out.

Also, the IRS can (but does not always) withhold a refund until prior years have been filed, especially if the information already reported to them (like W-2s) suggests that you will owe them money.

By the way, it still possible to e-file 2011 returns. I’m not sure if consumer-level software is supporting it, but this is the first year where the IRS has been capable of accepting a prior-year return. It’s made my life as a preparer just a little bit easier.

3

Thanks for the info! I might just go ahead and file. What with the shutdown, who knows when my paper return will be looked at. I certainly don’t owe money (I overpay on tax intentionally to cover freelancing tax, so I don’t pay estimated quarterly tax payments – but when I got sick, I stopped doing so much of that, so I am owed quite a lot.)

Considering my failure to file a return from 2011 has only generated two politely worded IRS letters (Please file your 2011 return soon, thank you) I’m not too worried about correspondence from them.

I use TaxACT and they disallowed e-file on 2011 returns. No idea if anyone else allows it. But I’ve already sent the return so it’s no big deal.

4

In the past, you couldn’t e-file previous year returns, if it’s changed I didn’t know. If it is okay, likely they just don’t think it’s worth the work writing software for the few people who want to file old returns.

Just send it and check your inbox/log into the account. The worst that could happen is that they reject it, and you fix whatever’s wrong.

Besides applying a refund, another reason why someone might want to wait is if they are applying something from a previous year, e.g. capital loss.