Certify Signature Service Made Easy

Use the IRS label here form

hi I'm David McCray I'm a certified public accountant and I'm going to show you a method that you can use to send documents tax returns letters to the IRS in a foolproof way to show that the documents were actually sent on time and they were actually received by the IRS and I'm going to do this using certified mail and a special little cover letter now I'm going to show you how you can use certified mail to mail documents tax returns to the IRS and a foolproof method to prove that they actually did receive what you sent first you start with the document that you're going to send and you'll need to determine the correct address at the IRS to mail that particular document or form so you'll need an envelope address to that address if it's a tax return or application of some kind in the instructions to that return or application will be the proper address to mail it to at the IRS if it's a penalty notice that you're responding to the address will be contained in the penalty notice so be sure to send it to the right place second thing is you're going to need to go to the post office and you're going to need to get a form 38:11 which is this return receipt and also this other little form that accompanies it and that's the certified mail receipt that proves when you mailed the form so both of these can be picked up at the lobby of your neighborhood post office so we'll start out with the return receipt and on the front of it you're just going to put your return address so this card can come back to you and on the other side you're going to put the proper IRS address you're going to mark that this is certified mail and then you're going to put the certified mail number right down in this spot here you can write it in or you can just peel it right off of the certified mail receipt like this and then just stick it right on there like that so then this little green form you're going to put the IRS as address here and I also recommend putting right over here and underneath where the postmarks going to be just put the name of your organization and the form and even the year number that way you can you won't get confused about what tax return or what communication this particular certified mail receipt goes to and you won't have to go look up the number so that's the certified mail portion of it the next part is preparing a cover letter or transmittal letter and this is a letter to the IRS explaining what's in the envelope okay so you're going to start out with simply with with your name and address the date and the proper address to the Internal Revenue Service you want to say what it's about the organization's name if it's in response to a penalty notice you'll want to reference that particular penalty notice there and I like to identify the organization using its employer identification number if that's appropriate and I simply say dear service center representative enclosed are the following items submitted on behalf of the above-named organization then I list what's in the package if it's a form 990 I simply write that on for instance in this example I say 2006 form 990 and attachments if there's a check in there make note of the check whatever is in there then say please indicate that the aforementioned items were received by marking the copy of this transmittal letter as received and kindly return it to me and the self-addressed stamped envelope enclosed thank you very much signature and put your certified mail receipt number here at the bottom to match what was on the little green card okay so that way you can tie all these documents together next the last thing you need is a self-addressed envelope be sure to put a stamp on it and I always send an extra copy of the transmittal letter in case the IRS wants to keep a copy for themselves so they'll stamp at least one of these and mail it back to me in this stamp self-addressed envelope so what does all this accomplish well first this little certified mail receipt gets the post offices stamp right here date stamp and that proves the date that I mailed it your postage meter at your office isn't going to cut it you need to actually go up to the postal clerk in the post office and have them actually stamp it with their machine there then this will come back to you after the IRS gets it and stamps it the date that it was received and this will prove that they actually received the package from you then unfortunately that doesn't prove what was in the package so that's where the transmittal letter comes in when that comes back to you it will be stamped received with a date on it from the IRS and in it they're acknowledging that they've received everything that's in there so in your final package to the IRS you have the document that you're attach return that you're mailing to the IRS that goes in the envelope then your cover letter with stamped self-addressed envelope paper clip to it that goes in the envelope you're going to seal it up take your certified mailing forms just like this to the post office I usually just paperclip them to the envelope like that and there you go and that to the postal clerk and probably cost you five maybe six dollars and you're good to go so as you can see if you use this method to mail documents to the IRS you can prove when you mailed it when the IRS received it and exactly what the IRS received from you I like to end by saying that if it's possible to file a tax return or send a document electronically like a filing your 1040 you should always do that because then you have electronic confirmation that the document was sent by a certain time and exactly what document was sent and that's always the the easiest and the usually the least expensive way to do it but for documents where it's not appropriate to even efile them or it's not possible then the method i've just explained is an exxon