Substantial Penalty for Late Partnership and S-Corporation Returns

Income from both partnership and S corporation returns passes through to the partners or stockholders. Therefore, filing these returns late creates hardships for the partners or stockholders to timely meet their own filing obligations. As a result, the government has imposed some substantial penalties for failure to timely file partnership and S corporation returns.

The penalty is a statutory dollar amount times the number of partners or shareholders for each month (or fraction of a month) that the failure continues, up to a maximum of 12 months. The base amount on which a penalty is computed is $195 per partner or shareholder for returns due for tax years starting in 2010. This is a substantial increase from the previous amount of $89 per partner or shareholder that applies if the entity’s tax year began in 2009. As an example, if your partnership files its 2010 return late and has four partners, the penalty will be $780 ($195 x 4) per month. The IRS may waive the penalty if there is reasonable cause for the late filing.