The sequestration budget cuts are impacting the operations of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). The IRS has advised that its offices will remain closed on the following dates: June 14, July 5, July 22 and August 30. On these days, the IRS’s Modernized eFile system (“MeF”) will also be non-operational.
Tax professionals should note that the MeF platform will be unavailable from 10:00 pm EDT on the night prior to the office closures until 9:00 am EDT on the day following the closure date. To clarify, for the July 22 closure date, the MeF system, both the Production and Assurance Testing modules, will be unavailable from 10:00 pm EDT on July 21 until 9:00 am EDT on July 23.
The deadline for transmitters, for both state and federal returns, is 8:00 pm EDT the night before the office closure, or two hours before the MeF becomes unavailable. The last acknowledgements can be retrieved at 10:00 pm.
The system closure will impact the ability of states to transmit acknowledgements of submitted returns. The states that schedule retrieval of state returns will need to modify their schedules to ensure that returns can be validated and acknowledged prior to the 10:00 pm cut off time. The IRS advises that all acknowledgments must be transmitted by 9:30 pm EDT, 30 minutes before the system goes down.
The MeF system will be back on line for states and transmitters at 9:00 am EDT, the day after the office closure.
Tax professionals can monitor the MeF site for all updates and changes.
