Published July 14, 2020

Legal Thoughts is a podcast presentation by Coleman Jackson, P.C., a law firm based in Dallas, Texas serving individuals, businesses and agencies from around the world in taxation, litigation and immigration legal matters.

This particular episode of Legal Thoughts is a podcast where the Attorney, Coleman Jackson is being interviewed by Mayra Torres, the Public Relations Associate of Coleman Jackson, P.C.

The topic of discussion is “Potentially Over 2 Million ITINs Expired at the End of 2019:  Did your families ITINs expire in 2019.”  You can listen to this podcast here:

You can also listen to this episode and subscribe to Coleman Jackson, P.C.’s Legal Thoughts podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Cashbox or where ever you may listen to your podcast.

TRANSCRIPT:

ATTORNEY:  Coleman Jackson
Legal Thoughts
COLEMAN JACKSON, ATTORNEY & COUNSELOR AT LAW

ATTORNEY:  Coleman Jackson

Welcome to Tax Thoughts

• My name is Coleman Jackson and I am an attorney at Coleman Jackson, P.C., a taxation, litigation and immigration law firm based in Dallas, Texas.
• Our topic for today is: “Potentially Over 2 Million ITINs Expired at the End of 2019: Did your families ITINs expire in 2019.”
• On this “Legal Thoughts” podcast our public relations associate, Mayra Torres will be asking the questions and I will be responding to her questions on this important tax topic: “Potentially Over 2 Million ITINs Expired at the End of 2019: Did your families ITINs expire?”

Interviewer:  Mayra Torres, Public Relations Associate

Question 1:

What is an ITIN and who uses an ITIN?

Attorney Answers Question 1:

1. Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers or ITINs are used by people who have federal tax filing or federal tax payment obligations under U.S. federal tax law who are not eligible for a Social Security number.
2. ITINs are used by many Texans who are not authorized to work in the United States because they do not have work authorizations issued by the Department of Homeland Security; therefore, these workers cannot obtain a Social Security number from the Social Security Administration. I point out that an ITIN cannot be used for work authorization purposes; it is solely to be used for tax compliance purposes.
3. Many undocumented individuals who live and work in the United States use ITINs which are issued by the United States Treasury for tax purposes. Whole families quite often use ITINs to fulfill their tax obligations and many undocumented children also use ITIN’s so that their parents can take the child tax credit, earned income credit and other benefits offered to taxpayers in the Internal Revenue Code.

Interviewer:  Mayra, Public Relations Associate

Question No. 2

• Oh, I see; thanks for giving me a full answer to my questions.
• I have a few more questions…: Are ITINs like a Social Security Number; I mean Social Security Numbers issued by the Social Security Administration are assigned to a person for life, right?  How about the ITIN issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury?  Is an ITIN issued to a person for life too?

Attorney Answers Question No. 2

• Those are extremely good questions, Mayra.
• A Social Security Number issued to a person by the Social Security Administration is issued to them for life. That means a person receives only one social security number that they use their entire lives.  Most social security numbers are assigned when U.S. citizens are children.  They keep that number for life.
• No, the ITIN is not issued for the life of the recipient. The U.S. Congress passed a law called “Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 (PATH Act) which became law on December 18, 2015.
• The PATH Act modified U.S. Tax law, 26 U.S.C. Section 6109 as it pertains to ITINs in two major ways:
• Number 1: ITINs that have not been used on a tax return for 3 tax periods expire.  For example, ITINs not used on a tax return in 2014, 2015, or 2016 expired December 31, 2017.  ITINs not used on a tax return for 2015, 2016 or 2017 expired December 31, 2018.  And ITINs not used on a tax return for 2016, 2017, and 2018 expired on December 31, 2019.
• WARNING: Filing delinquent tax returns are extremely problematic because household ITINs expire by 3 years of none use automatically.  This is a major development regarding ITINs since the PATH Act became law in the United States.
• Now, let me discuss the second major change to tax law by enactment of the PATH Act:
• The PATH Act of 2015 authorized the Internal Revenue Service to develop and implement an annual rolling middle digit expiration schedule for all ITINs in circulation.
• Under this rolling middle digit expiration schedule, the IRS makes an annual announcement listing the middle digits of ITINs which will expire end of that calendar year. This list of expiring ITINs is usually posted on IRS.gov and possibly in financial newspapers.
• Since publishing the list of expiring ITINs over the years since the PATH Act, the IRS has announced that the following middle digit ITINs would expire if not properly renewed by the holder of the ITIN:
• All ITINs with middle digits of 70, 71, 72 or 80 expired on December 31, 2017 if not properly renewed.
• All ITINs with middle digits of 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, or 82 expired on December 31, 2018.
• All ITINs with middle digits of 83, 84, 85, 86 or 87 expired on December 31, 2019.
• Let me just say that the IRS announced on October 10, 2019 that these ITINs can be renewed if the holder files a Form W-7 with the proper paperwork. Moreover, the IRS also said that ITINs with middle digits of 70 through 82 that expired in 2016, 2017 and 2018 can also be renewed if the proper paperwork is filed.  So people should understand that they can renew an expired ITIN.

Interviewer:  Mayra, Public Relations Associate

Question 3:

Wow that is a lot!  It’s good to know that ITIN users can renew their expiring and expired ITINs.  So how are ITINs renewed?  I mean what does an ITIN user have to do to renew their ITIN?

Attorney Answers Question No. 3 

• Those are good questions, Mayra.
• The ITIN holder should have received an IRS Notice CP-48 alerting them to the fact that their ITIN was about to expire. This notice would have given them detailed instructions as to how to renew their ITIN.  This Notice however could have been sent to the address where they lived at the time they originally applied for their ITIN.
• If they did not receive the notice and instructions, they can still renew their ITIN by filing IRS Form W-7 and complying with all the instructions listed in the W-7 Instructions.
• I might add that ITIN users should check all of the ITINs used by the members of their household and renew all the ITINs in the household even though only one or two of them have expired. The renewal can be filed for all ITINs in a household; and what I mean about household, is mom, dad and minor children who all use ITINs because they are not eligible for social security numbers.

Interviewer:  Mayra, Public Relations Associate

Question No. 4:

• This has been informative. One last question Attorney:
• What can happen if an ITIN expires and is not timely renewed?

Attorney Answers Question No. 4:

• Bad things are all but certain to happen:
• Tax Refunds could very likely to be delayed
• The family could be denied the child tax credit with all the potential year-after-year tax difficulties that could arise from falsely claiming the child tax credit
• The earned income credit could be denied with all the potential long term implications from falsely claiming the earned income credit
• Accuracy Penalties and interest could be assessed by the IRS for filing inaccurate tax returns.
• To summarize: A taxpayers failing to renew an ITIN could lead to all kinds of difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service’s Exam Unit and Collections division. Taxpayers who use these ITINs must remain vigilant annually and check to see whether any of the ITINs used in their households are set to expire either because of expiration under the 3 year of none use rule or expiration under the IRS rolling middle digit expiration schedule.

Attorney’s Concluding Remarks:

This is the end of Legal Thoughts for now!

• Thanks for giving us the opportunity to inform you about expiration of ITINs: It’s time to check Your ITINs because they might be expired or expiring soon.  If you want to see or hear more taxation, litigation and immigration LEGAL THOUGHTS from Coleman Jackson, P.C.  Subscribe on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast.  Stay tune!  We are here in Dallas, Texas and want to inform, educate and encourage our communities on topics dealing with taxation, litigation and immigration.  Until next time, take care.