The IRS may owe you a refund.

If so, you need to act now to protect your right to collect it.

In a major taxpayer victory, the Court of Federal Claims ruled that a COVID-era law postponing many tax filing and payment deadlines applied automatically to all taxpayers during the pandemic disaster period.

The decision could open the door for millions of taxpayers to recover IRS penalties and interest assessed or paid between January 20, 2020, and July 11, 2023. Potential refunds could include failure-to-file penalties, failure-to-pay penalties, estimated tax penalties, and interest paid on underpayments.

But you and your fellow taxpayers shouldn’t wait. The ruling in Kwong v. United States is likely headed for appeal, and the IRS will almost certainly fight efforts to issue refunds. To preserve your rights while the courts sort out the issue, you should consider filing protective refund and abatement claims right now.

The Tax Deadline Postponement

In December 2019—months before COVID-19 was declared a federal disaster—Congress enacted a law intended to give taxpayers automatic relief from tax deadlines whenever they faced a federally declared disaster, sparing them from having to wait on the IRS to exercise its discretionary authority.

The law provided that, for qualified taxpayers in a disaster area, the period beginning on the earliest incident date specified in the disaster declaration and ending 60 days after the latest incident date specified would be disregarded in determining whether time-sensitive acts—including filing tax returns and refund claims—were performed on ... Log in to view full article.