E-filing

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will conduct its annual Labor Day outage. The modernized e-file (MeF) system will be shut down during the outage. As a result, federal and Rhode Island e-filing will be unavailable during the period.

• The temporary MeF shutdown will start at 9:00 p.m. on August 31, 2019
• The temporary MeF shutdown will end at 7:00 a.m. on September 3, 2019.

The IRS will not be accepting electronically filed federal tax returns during the period. Also, the joint fed-state e-file program will be unavailable during the period. Therefore, Rhode Island returns transmitted via e-file during the period will not be transmitted to the state. Tax preparers and taxpayers should plan accordingly.

The joint fed-state e-file program is a cooperative tax-filing effort between the IRS and most states, including Rhode Island. In general, it allows for federal and state returns to be e-filed simultaneously to the IRS. Once the returns are filed, the IRS keeps the federal portion; the state portion is passed along electronically to the applicable state.