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IRS Addresses Erroneous Extension Request Approvals

The IRS has taken action to address more than 700 erroneous extension request approvals it issued recently.

Approximately 710 of the approvals the IRS Ogden office sent concerning Forms 5558 which had been filed concerning this year’s filing date contained erroneous information for the taxpayers who filed them. The notices of approval were dated 2017, but referred to the tax period ending Dec. 31, 2006, and said that the return for which the extension had been requested must be filed by Oct. 15, 2007.

To address the mistake, the Ogden office has retained a list of all taxpayers affected and has manually entered the correct extension due date on the accounts to avoid any penalties being issued. The office also has been alerted of the transcription error so they can take extra steps to stop this from happening in the future. In addition, IRS accounts management personnel have been alerted so if a penalty abatement request is received they will remove the penalty since it was due to an IRS error.

The Form 5558 is used to request an extension of the time to file a Form 5500 and/or Form 8955-SSA.