Mailed multiple years of late tax forms in the same envelope. Did I mess up? What to do?

I just mailed 3 years of late tax forms to the IRS. I mailed them in the same envelope, but they were well-organized and separately stapled.

Now, after reading some IRS mix-up horror stories, I am worried I made a mistake and should have sent them in separately. It's too late now.

How competent is the IRS in handling multiple years of tax forms sent in the same envelope?

Can I call the IRS and warn them of my multiple years in one envelope scenario, to prevent them from screwing up!? I am worried they are going to staple it all together in one pile and then not process it correctly, or at worse tell me I didn't send one or all of the forms.

Is there anything I can do at this point? Am I worried over nothing (I hope!)??

Thanks everyone for your knowledge and advice!!

I also want to add that I received a letter from the IRS requesting that I submit the tax forms for the 3 years that I didn't file. Nowhere does the IRS mention to mail these forms separately.

It's very possible that all 3 were stapled together by the machine that opened the envelope. The top one would be processed but the other 2 would be at risk of not being noticed. It's OK to use a single outer envelope, but each return must be in a separate inner envelope to avoid that possibility. The letters you received from the IRS may not have specified separate envelopes but the filing instructions are pretty clear on that.

Give it a few weeks and call them to make sure that they received them all. If they only have a record of one of them, ask them to put a trace on it to see if the other two can be located.

TFTP Report It

I used to be an IRS telephone representative and we always advised taxpayers to mail the returns in separate envelopes to avoid the possibility of a mix-up. It's good that you stapled them together, though.

It won't do any good to call the IRS as there's no way to reach the folks who will be opening the mail. I wouldn't worry about it.

The IRS will treat each of these returns separately.

If you are owed refunds, you should check back in 6 weeks to see if the refund is being processed.

Otherwise, each check for payment of taxes owed will be processed separately with the appropriate return.

Although Congress pays IRS Service Center employees minimum wage, they do a creditable job of handling 80 million tax returns each year.

Wait until the first tax return is processed and you get a letter about it. Then call and ask if the other 2 years were found and ask if a referral can be written to the service center to see if the original return can be pulled.