deceased taxpayer date of death limit

rbynaker, I wouldn't think the SSN had been locked.  Taxpayer was alive until June 2023.  He just hadn't filed his 2021 return.

Meanwhile, I wasn't planning to paper file.  There's no prohibition against e-filing for a deceased taxpayer.  But if ProSeries doesn't let me enter the date of death, the return won't print the deceased message at the top.  The return will have to be printed and the message hand-written so that the personal representative's signature will be accepted.

@MKEA 

"I thought my post was supposed to report the error to the IT team.  I do appreciate the community trying to help, but this is a program error.  Is there another way to report it?"

This community is peopled by fellow software users. It is not the IT Team.

I'm not sure if this is a program error or an IRS spec. To officially report it, you will need to contact Support. And don't hold your breath waiting for a solution.

" I wouldn't think the SSN had been locked "

Why wouldn't you?  The purpose of locking the SSN is to deter identity thieves.  I would not expect IRS to tell its programmers, "Lock this year's return but don't lock any previous year returns, because we still are waiting for them."

IRS doesn't know whether your decedent had enough income to file in 2021.  I may know that he did not, or that the family has told others how Grandpa was a tax deadbeat before he was dead.  And I can dummy up a W-2 or 1099-R showing $10,000 in withholding on $30,000 income in 2021, and file it with the special bank account I opened for collecting such refunds.  Lock those numbers for then, lock them for now, lock them forever.  

BobKamman, SSNs are locked for posthumous years, not for years when the taxpayer was alive and receiving taxable income.

sjrcpa, I called Support first thing.  The link and instructions they sent me led straight here.  I don't see any other avenue for reporting an error.

Wonderful.

In other words, Support is not interested/doesn't care.

"SSNs are locked for posthumous years, not for years when the taxpayer was alive and receiving taxable income."  Once it's locked, it's locked.

I opened a 2021 return in ProSeries and had no problem entering a 2023 date of death.  I printed Page 1 and it showed the date of death at top.  

Was the 2022 return filed before the 2021 return was attempted?  I think a filed return with a date of death locks all returns for the taxpayer, not just the current or future ones.  But TIGTA had a report a couple months ago about IRS locking 70,000+ returns as decedents, without including a date of death.  

BobKamman, PS21 tells me that "Taxpayer date of death should not be after 04/11/2023."  But his SSN wouldn't have been locked before his 6/17/23 death, would it?  Meanwhile, the same date doesn't produce an error in his PS22 return (which hasn't been filed), and I tested it using another 2021 return that has yet to be filed - no error there.  I really think it's some kind of fluke in PS.  Either way, I'm going to have to file 2021 on paper with the Deceased message handwritten at top, because tech "support" was no help.

@MKEA  Glad I don't have that fluke.