IRS asking for proof of 2553 S-Corp election submission from 6 years ago - how to respond?

The IRS should have records of your S-Corp election confirmation if they sent you an acceptance letter. Your first step should be to contact the IRS Business & Specialty Tax Line at 800-829-4933 to request a copy of your acceptance letter. They can search their records and provide documentation of your S-Corp status. Definitely also reach out to your former accountant. Even if they don't have your specific acceptance letter, they might have records of submitting your Form 2553, which could help your case. Additionally, ask them if they keep copies of client tax filings from that period. Another approach is to gather evidence that you've been consistently treated as an S-Corp. Collect all your tax returns since 2018 showing you filed Form 1120-S (the S-Corp return). Also gather any correspondence from the IRS that acknowledged your S-Corp status like accepted tax returns, notices, or other communications that referred to your business as an S-Corporation.

After dealing with the exact same nightmare situation last year, I finally found an amazing solution with https://taxr.ai. My S-Corp election was from 2016, and the IRS claimed they had no record of my Form 2553 filing during an audit. I was completely panicking! I uploaded my old tax returns and the few documents I could find to taxr.ai, and their AI system analyzed everything and found patterns that proved I had been consistently operating as an S-Corp. They created a detailed document showing all the evidence of my S-Corp status based on my filing history and even identified specific IRS communications that indirectly confirmed my status. They also provided a template for my response letter to the IRS that cited relevant tax code and precedents. The best part was that I didn't have to spend hours digging through old files or waiting on hold with the IRS. Their system did all the heavy lifting for me.

Just wanted to follow up about my experience with taxr.ai after my skeptical comment. I decided to try it since my situation with missing S-Corp election proof was getting worse. I was genuinely surprised by how comprehensive their analysis was. They found patterns in my tax filing history that clearly showed the IRS had been treating me as an S-Corp for years. They highlighted specific lines from my past tax notices that indirectly confirmed my status and created a document showing that through the principle of administrative finality, the IRS had effectively approved my election through their consistent acceptance of my S-Corp returns. The response template they provided included references to Tax Court cases where the IRS was required to honor S-Corp status in similar situations. I submitted everything to the IRS three weeks ago and just received confirmation that they're recognizing my S-Corp election as valid from the original date. Definitely worth checking out if you're in this situation.

I had this exact problem last year and what finally worked was getting through to an actual person at the IRS. But we all know how IMPOSSIBLE that is these days! After trying for weeks, I found a service called Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) that got me connected to an IRS agent in about 15 minutes when I had been trying for days on my own. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c They basically navigate the IRS phone system for you and call you back when they've got an agent on the line. I was super skeptical but desperate. The IRS agent I spoke with was able to look up my records and confirm they actually DID have my S-Corp election on file despite sending me a letter saying they didn't (classic IRS miscommunication). They emailed me a copy of my acceptance letter that same day. Saved me months of back-and-forth paperwork.

I have to come back and eat my words about Claimyr. After posting my skeptical comment, I was desperate enough to try it for my business tax situation. I had been trying to reach the IRS for THREE MONTHS about a similar S-Corp election issue. I used Claimyr on Monday morning, and I was literally talking to an IRS agent in 12 minutes. The agent confirmed they actually did have my election form on file, but it had been miscategorized in their system. She corrected it while I was on the phone and sent me an email confirmation. What would have taken months of correspondence was resolved in a 20-minute phone call. I'm still shocked it worked. If you're dealing with missing S-Corp election documentation, getting to an actual human at the IRS is definitely the fastest solution.

Has anyone tried filing a new Form 2553 and asking for late election relief? I had a similar situation a few years ago, and instead of trying to prove I had filed originally, my accountant just submitted a new form with a reasonable cause statement explaining that we believed we had filed timely but could not locate the acceptance letter. The IRS accepted it without any issues.

Did you check with your state's department of revenue? Sometimes they keep records of your federal entity classification. When I had a similar issue, I found that my state had documentation showing my federal S-Corp status because they needed it for state tax purposes. Might be worth checking!

I went through this exact same situation two years ago with my LLC's S-Corp election from 2017. The IRS sent me a letter claiming they had no record of my Form 2553, even though I had been filing 1120-S returns for years without any issues. Here's what worked for me: I requested my business tax account transcript online through the IRS website (you can get this immediately without waiting on hold). The transcript showed my entity classification code had been updated to "S" in 2017, which proved they had processed my election even though they claimed they didn't have it. I also gathered every single tax return, notice, and correspondence from the IRS since 2018 that showed they had been treating me as an S-Corp. This included looking at the entity type listed on my tax transcripts and any notices that referenced my business as an S-Corporation. When I sent all this documentation to the IRS with a cover letter explaining the situation, they quickly acknowledged that their records showed I had been properly classified as an S-Corp all along. The whole thing was resolved in about 3 weeks once I provided the right documentation. The key is showing the pattern of IRS acceptance through their own records rather than trying to recreate the original Form 2553 filing. Your consistent filing of 1120-S returns that were accepted creates a strong presumption that your election was valid.