Transcript Delivery System down for some Form 941 transcripts

The IRS has reported a Transcript Delivery System (TDS) programming issue that affects business taxpayers who reported information related to COVID-19 employment tax relief on Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return.

The IRS says that, as a result, account transcripts requested for Form 941 for all quarters in tax year 2021 may not generate properly and that transcripts are not being delivered to the Secure Object Repository (SOR) Mailbox for IRS e-Services users.

When users attempt to view a transcript online, they see a message indicating that TDS has encountered an “unrecoverable error processing the request.” The IRS also says paper transcripts are not being mailed out.

The IRS Record of Account Transcript is also being affected by the outage and can display a message of “No record of return filed.”

Finally, the IRS says its customer service representatives are also unable to obtain these transcripts.

The IRS says it expects the programming issue to be fixed on Sept. 26, 2021.

Practitioners who need payroll tax records in order to complete tax returns due Sept. 15 should consider obtaining those records from their clients or payroll providers.

Taxpayers who are assessed a penalty because of these system issues may request penalty abatement and should consider first-time penalty abatement and reasonable-cause criteria. For more information, consult the AICPA Tax Section’s IRS First-Time Penalty Abatement Guidance, IRS Penalty Abatement Templates, and Federal Taxpayer Penalties Guide.

— Alistair M. Nevius, J.D., (Alistair.Nevius@aicpa-cima.com) is the JofA‘s editor-in-chief, tax.