Taxpayers who file a return late are subject to penalty under Code §6651 “unless it is shown that such failure is due to reasonable cause and not due to willful neglect.” In United States v. Boyle, 469 U.S. 241 (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a bright line rule that if a taxpayer relies on a third party professional to prepare and file the return and the professional does not timely do so, that is not reasonable cause and the taxpayer can be penalized.

Boyle was adopted well before the era of electronic filing of tax returns. Indeed, Rev. Proc. 2011-25 provides that specified tax return preparers, including any paid professional planning to prepare more than 10 returns a year, MUST file returns through e-file software. Thus, more and more taxpayers are relying . . .