Resource

Multi-Year Kwong Claims: Coordinating 2020–2024 Filings

Cassandra de la Fe, CPA · May 8, 2026

Kwong v. United States (179 Fed. Cl. 382, Nov. 25, 2025) established that IRC §7508A(d) mandatorily postponed every federal tax deadline falling inside the COVID-19 disaster period — January 20, 2020 through July 10, 2023. If you paid IRS penalties or interest on returns due across multiple years within that window, you face a coordination problem that most generic Kwong coverage skips: different statutes of limitations per year, different penalty types with different calculation mechanics, and one Form 843 required per year per penalty category. Our Kwong protective refund claim service handles multi-year filings with a free eligibility screen — but if you want to understand the framework before you call, this guide walks through each layer.

Why Multi-Year Coordination Matters

Most taxpayers with Kwong exposure have at least two affected years. A self-employed filer who filed late in 2020, missed an estimated payment in 2021, and had a balance due on their 2022 return could face three separate statute-of-limitations clocks running simultaneously — and each one requires its own Form 843.

The coordination risk is real. File one year and ignore another and you lose the non-filed year permanently when the clock runs. Combine penalty types from two different years onto a single Form 843 and the IRS will reject or reclassify the claim. The IRS is explicit: Form 843 instructions require one form per tax year and one penalty type per claim period.

The other risk is ordering. If you have both a 2020 and a 2022 claim, the 2020 claim carries the earlier statute and must be filed first — but practitioners sometimes process the largest-dollar claim first without checking deadlines. Dollar amount does not drive the queue. Statute expiration does.

Three Penalty Types, Three Filing Strategies

The three penalty categories affected by Kwong each behave differently across years.

Failure-to-file penalty (IRC §6651(a)(1)). This is 5% of unpaid tax per month, capped at 25%. It attaches when a return is not filed by the due date. For returns due inside the COVID disaster period — say, a 2020 return originally due April 15, 2021 — the mandatory postponement under §7508A(d) means the penalty should never have attached. The refund claim amount equals the assessed penalty amount, less any portion that ran after the disaster period closed.

Failure-to-pay penalty (IRC §6651(a)(2)). This is 0.5% of unpaid tax per month, also capped at 25%. It runs from the payment due date, which for quarterly estimated taxes means April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 for each year. Because estimated-tax due dates fall across the calendar, multiple quarters in a single year may have separate exposure windows — and each quarter is technically its own penalty accrual.

Underpayment interest (IRC §6601). This is the federal short-term rate plus 3%, compounding daily. Interest is the largest line item for many taxpayers, especially those who owed significant balances during 2020–2022. Morgan Lewis confirmed that all three penalty types are substantively affected by the ruling, not just the failure-to-file penalty as early coverage implied. That means interest claims are worth filing separately even when the penalty amounts look small.

Statute of Limitations Per Tax Year

The statute of limitations for a Form 843 refund claim is three years from the date the tax was paid, per IRC §6511(a). For most COVID-period penalties, the IRS collected payment during 2020–2023. Here is how the math works by year:

  • 2020 tax year (penalties typically collected mid-2021 through 2022): the three-year clock from mid-2021 payment runs to mid-2024. But many 2020 penalties were assessed later, or CP14 notices were issued in 2022, which extends the collection date. In practice, most 2020 year claims remain open through July 10, 2026 — the date the COVID disaster period itself closes plus three years from the final disaster-period payment.
  • 2021 tax year (penalties typically collected 2022–2023): three-year clock runs to 2025–2026. Most are still open but some earlier 2021 assessments may be tighter than expected.
  • 2022 tax year (penalties collected 2023): three-year clock runs to 2026. These are generally the most comfortable timeline.
  • 2023 tax year (disaster period closed July 10, 2023; penalties on returns due before that date): claims can still be open, particularly for estimated-tax underpayment penalties on Q1–Q2 2023 quarterly payments.

The practical deadline for most COVID-period claims is July 10, 2026. The National Taxpayer Advocate's April 2026 blog post urges taxpayers not to wait for the IRS's pending appeal of Kwong to resolve — filing now preserves rights regardless of how the appeal ends.

Order of Operations

With multi-year exposure, sequence matters.

Step 1: Pull IRS Account Transcripts for each year. Order via IRS Online Account or Form 4506-T. Transcripts show exact penalty assessments, collection dates, and any prior abatements — the numbers you actually put on Form 843, not the notice totals.

Step 2: Map each penalty to its collection date and calculate the three-year expiration. This tells you which year is the most urgent. File that one first, then work forward chronologically.

Step 3: Draft one Form 843 per year per penalty type. A taxpayer with failure-to-file and underpayment interest on 2020, plus a failure-to-pay on 2021, needs three separate Form 843 filings. That is not an error — it is what the IRS requires.

Step 4: File by certified mail with tracking for each submission. The USPS postmark date is the filing date for Form 843. AICPA-CIMA's Kwong resource center notes that paper-only filing mechanics are non-negotiable for Form 843 — there is no e-file pathway for refund and abatement claims of this type.

Step 5: Track processing separately. IRS processing for Form 843 currently runs four to six months per submission. Multiple submissions do not get combined; they are queued independently.

What to Document for Each Year

For each tax year in your multi-year filing, gather the following before preparing Form 843:

IRS Account Transcript. This is the source document. It shows penalty line items by IRC code section, assessment dates, and collection history. Do not rely on old CP14 or CP501 notices — the transcript is the authoritative record.

Original return or extension confirmation. For failure-to-file claims, you need to document when the return was due and when it was actually filed. An accepted e-file confirmation or the stamped received date on a paper return establishes the filing date.

Payment records. For underpayment interest claims, you need the dates on which you actually paid the tax. IRS applies payments to oldest liabilities first, so a single payment can partially satisfy penalties across multiple periods.

Prior abatement history. If the IRS previously granted first-time penalty abatement (FTA) or reasonable-cause relief for any year, you need that record. Overlapping abatements affect the net refund amount — you cannot recover what was already abated on a different theory.

EisnerAmper's post-Kwong analysis highlights that multi-year filers frequently discover larger total recoveries than expected once estimated-tax penalties across all quarters are included — a detail easy to miss when reviewing only the main CP14 notices.

Getting Your Multi-Year Filing Done

Multi-year coordination is the most detail-intensive part of Kwong claim preparation. The IRS will not consolidate claims across years, reject improperly combined filings, or extend the statute because a taxpayer was confused about the paperwork.

Our Kwong protective refund claim service prepares each Form 843 with the required protective language — "Protective Refund Claim Pursuant to Kwong v. United States" with the full §7508A(d) basis — and files by certified mail with tracking. For a single-year worked example showing how the penalty math works before you calculate your own amounts, see our Kwong refund amount estimate guide.

The July 10, 2026 deadline does not move. Filing early is the only way to leave room for a re-submission if a processing error requires correction before the statute closes.

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