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What if the post office loses my 83(b) election?

83(b)EquityTaxCompliance

If you sent it by ordinary mail, the answer is to send it again today if the 30 days have not run. If you sent it by certified or registered mail, you are in a better position than it feels. Section 7502 of the tax code says a document deposited in the US mail, properly addressed with postage paid, is treated as filed on its postmark date, and that registration is itself evidence the document was delivered, with the registration date standing as the postmark. The Treasury regulations extend that to certified mail. Your certified mail receipt, with its date, is the evidence the law accepts that the election was filed that day. It can be challenged, so still refile if the window is open. A lost envelope is a problem, but with the receipt in hand it is not a fatal one.

What the receipt has to show

The date the post office accepted it, which must fall inside the 30 days, and the address it went to, which must be the right IRS office. Keep it with your signed copy of the election. If the return receipt never arrives, print the tracking history from the USPS site while it still exists, because tracking records are not kept forever.

If the window is still open

Refile by certified mail. Nothing stops you sending a second signed copy by post, and a duplicate election does no harm. Do not use the IRS online form as the duplicate route, because it asks you to confirm you have not also mailed one. A second mailing inside the 30 days is the cleanest cure for any doubt about the first, and it costs a stamp.

If you sent it by ordinary mail and the window has closed

This is the hard case. Without a certified or registered receipt there is no postmark evidence, and under the Treasury regulations a certified or registered mail receipt, or a designated private courier's receipt, is the only evidence the IRS accepts that a document which never arrived was delivered. A dated cover letter, a witness or the copy handed to the company does not substitute. Whether anything else can be done is a question with real money behind it, so do not decide it alone. Ask Arabella can walk through what you have, and a tax adviser should see it before anything is filed.

Written by the lawyers who built Arabella. This is legal information, not legal advice for your situation, and reading it does not make us your lawyers. For a real dispute or a high-stakes decision, talk to a licensed attorney. More questions.