TACO

Treasury Always Chickens Out

Maybe I just missed it, but where do you see that the IRS is no longer accepting checks after September 30th?

Maybe I just missed the update.  Or maybe you are misreading the Executive Order?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/modernizing-payments-to-and-from-americas-ba...

"Effective September 30, 2025, and to the extent permitted by law, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cease issuing paper checks ".

"As soon as practicable, and to the extent permitted by law, all payments made to the Federal Government shall be processed electronically".

Side Note:  I haven't seen guidance yet, but "processed" electronically MIGHT include them accepting paper checks but then "processing" it as an electronic transaction, rather than a check transaction (which they may already do; see below).

When you provide a check as payment, you authorize us either to use information from your check to make a one-time electronic fund transfer from your account or to process the payment as a check transaction. When we use information from your check to make an electronic fund transfer, funds may be withdrawn from your account as soon as the same day we receive your payment, and you will not receive your check back from your financial institution.

https://www.irs.gov/payments/pay-by-check-or-money-order

Search for "IRS no longer accepting checks" in Google.  Even after you ignore all the AI slop, there are multiple articles addressing this situation.

The text of the Executive Order is a higher authority than articles found by Google.

I had also heard IRS won't accept checks after then. Guess we have to wait to see what IRS says.

I trust our Secretary of the Treasury on this. He’s a smart guy even though he did go to Yale. Remember he worked for George Soros for 14 years and helped him make billions of dollars. He’s no doubt aware of the deadlines in the Executive Order. Are you?

First deadline:

“(a) Effective September 30, 2025, and to the extent permitted by law, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cease issuing paper checks for all Federal disbursements inclusive of intragovernmental payments, benefits payments, vendor payments, and tax refunds, except as specified in section 4 of this order.”

So that’s where people are getting the September 30 date. It applies to payments from the government.

Second deadline:

“(c) As soon as practicable, and to the extent permitted by law, all payments made to the Federal Government shall be processed electronically, except as specified in section 4 of this order.”

Do you see a specific date there? I don’t.

The internet also says paid tax preparers are required to e-file tax returns.  There is a weird urban myth out there that some preparers still are paper filing client returns --------------- and they are even doing it from outside of a jail cell.  Go figure.

My clients file paper returns.  I only prepare them.  The people who consent to random unannounced IRS searches of their files have not learned the definitions of "preparing" and "filing."  

Sounds like you have heard those rumors too. 😉

@sjrcpa @BobKamman @IRonMaN I think they are going to continue to accept paper checks after September 30th like Bob and others have said. I believe they already mailed all four estimated payment forms 1040ES to people earlier in the year so I doubt if they would refuse to accept a paper check mailed in after September 30 with the 1040ES. But I guess we will have to wait and see.

Between the IRS and USPS, it would be six months before you ever got your check back if they did decide to not accept paper.  Sometimes the people making rules in this world are out of touch with reality.  Maybe some representatives from the Treasury department would like to sit down with 99 year old Auntie Annie to explain to her how she can make her payments using her 60 year old rotary phone.

@IRonMaN just imagine how Brother Cooley feels with his vintage wooden wall phone😉

He's lucky he did finally decide to upgrade from his telegraph system.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-to-phase-out-paper-tax-refund-checks-starting-with-individual-taxpa...

That's on the refund side, and I believe we are all at this point making sure our clients are having their refunds directly deposited.  I still have 24 clients on extension, so I need to get them all on board.

But what about those folks who owe money?  I'm strongly suggesting they pay online but I still don't know if the instruction letter is still going to default to paying by mail.  And what about the instructions for the Jan. 15 estimate payment?  I did call Intuit a while back and the tech support person had not heard about the March mandate.  

Why are you suggesting that they pay online?  There are times when the IRS (or the Commissioner of the Day) says "Jump," when I don't feel obligated to ask "How high?"  My clients tend to be intelligent individuals with extensive but distinct life experiences.  Most have already decided how much banking to do online, and are aware of its advantages and drawbacks.  I will pass along the word from above, but it's like doctors telling expectant mothers to tough it out.  Not what I get paid to do.  

If the IRS starts returning checks after Sept. 30 I should think our clients would wonder why we advised them to send that check in payment to the IRS.  

@DonnaAbbott  Read the last paragraph in the link I posted.

The Post Office might start returning checks because IRS changed mailing addresses with little warning in the middle of the year.  The United States Treasury is not going to return checks, nor has it ever said that it has any intention to do so. 

I haven't told any of my clients to stop mailing checks and I'm not losing any sleep over it.  Isn't the United States something like 999 gazillion dollars in debt?   Someone that has a lot of bills to pay usually doesn't return money owed to them.  Oh, and for the record ------------- CAGMC. 🚔

Check out the Kiplinger article.  Read all the way through.

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/irs-paper-checks-deadline-what-happens-after-september-30

@IRonMaN Does your liability insurance cover you for recommending that a client learn online banking at age 80, when her computer with inadequate virus protection is then hacked and she loses her life savings?  

Elsewhere, I found six "empty" messages on my office phone voicemail this morning, left within five minutes by (according to Caller ID) Chase Bank.  Several different numbers.  When I called one of them, a friendly banker told me this is a scam by someone impersonating the bank.  I thanked her for her help and noted that Jamie Dimon makes enough money that he doesn't care about sending out proactive notices to us "little people."  

@sjrcpa Thanks Sue for posting that.

Kiplinger's attempts at financial journalism from a right-wing perspective are always good for a few laughs.  Take what they say with a grain of salt.  For example, "Generally, after September 30, 2025, the Treasury Department has said that all federal agencies will cease sending and receiving paper checks as a form of payment."  Where did they say that?  If you Google that statement, it will send you back to the Kiplinger story.  Or, it will send you to this notice from the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which says nothing about accepting paper checks. 

https://fiscal.treasury.gov/news/paper-checks-going-away.html 

"But, if I saw it on the Internet, it must be true . . ."