IRS Admits Sending Erroneous Penalty Notices

The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that approximately 4,000 plan sponsors received erroneous penalty notices.

The erroneous notices were dated between July 28 and Aug. 26, 2013. The IRS mistakenly sent out the CP 283C, Notice of Balance Due for Incomplete/Late Penalties, for the Form 8955-SSA, Annual Registration Statement Identifying Separated Participants with Deferred Vested Benefits to thousands of businesses. The agency has now fixed the problem and alerted the recipients of the erroneous notices.

“We corrected the programming error that generated the notices and abated the erroneous penalties,” the IRS said in an email to employee benefit plan professionals. “We also sent letters apologizing for the error; it isn’t necessary to reply to the notice or to contact the IRS.”

However, some of the penalty notices were correct.

“If you received an IRS penalty notice dated between July 28 and August 26, 2013, for an issue unrelated to this programming error, you must respond according to the instructions in the notice,” the IRS added.

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Tax practice
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