I am a former IRS Agent Revenue Officer and teaching instructor with the Internal Revenue Service.

Few people know that the trust fund recovery penalty has a statute of limitation.

Many people pay the United States government and do not know their statutes have expired.

It’s best to contact and experience tax professional to find out if the statute of limitation on the trust fund recovery penalty, 6672 as in fact expired.

Many revenue officers keep these cases in their inventory well too long and before you know it the statutes have expired. This does not bode well by management and many times when the statute expired the revenue officers catch living Hell.

I seen a number of revenue officers fired because they let statutes of limitations expire.

Trust fund statute of limitations is very unique in itself.

People who do not pay their payroll taxes get caught up with the IRS asserting the 6672 penalty against responsible persons.

I am not going to go into that in detail. about this. I take it if you are looking the statute up you know what the trust fund penalty is.

 Below you will find from the Internal Revenue Service manual the trust fund recovery penalty in its appropriate statute of limitations.

IRS IRM 5.19.14.2.2 (08-03-2018)

Trust Fund Recovery Penalty Statute of Limitations

1. The general rule is that an assessment of tax must be made within three years from the date a return is filed or the due date of the return, whichever is later.


The IRS time frame for assessment of the trust fund recovery penalty against you is based on the filing date of your company’s employment tax returns (Form 941).

The IRS has three years from the filing date of the employment tax returns to come to you with the trust fund penalty.  The term “filing date” is important here because it is defined by Internal Revenue Code 6501(b)(2), which states that employment tax returns filed for any period ending within a calendar year are considered filed on April 15 of the succeeding year.

Good EXAMPLE:

Lets say a 941 return filed on time for June 30, 2018.

The IRS tax assessment does not begin to consider the return filed for trust fund assessment purposes until April 15, 2019.

This allows the time for the IRS to assess trust fund recovery penalty until April 15, 2022. That’s, three years from April 15, 2019. 

If a 941 return was filed timely for the quarter ending December 31, 2017, the IRS will have three years from April 15, 2018 to assess trust fund recovery penalty against you.

The IRS will have until April 15, 2021 to assess trust fund recovery penalty. 

If you file your Form 941 late, the statue of limitation for the IRS to assess trust fund recovery penalty is three years from the filing date, but the statute of limitation must have expired if it were filed on time. 

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Speak directly to a former IRS Agent.