Filed Pursuant to Rev. Proc. 2013-30: Form 2553 Filing Steps

Writing “Filed Pursuant to Rev. Proc. 2013-30” across the top of a late Form 2553 is the shorthand for a simplified IRS relief procedure that lets you correct a missed S corporation election without paying user fees or requesting a private letter ruling.¹ To use it, your situation has to meet four eligibility conditions, the request generally has to reach the IRS within three years and 75 days of the intended effective date, and the paperwork has to carry specific language and a signed reasonable cause statement. Get any of that wrong and the request can be rejected, which pushes you into the private letter ruling process that this procedure exists to help you avoid.

Who Qualifies for Relief

The standard path requires the request to reach the IRS within three years and 75 days of the date you wanted the S election to take effect. Within that window, you must meet all four of these conditions:¹

Intent. The entity intended to be an S corporation as of the requested effective date (or the trust intended ESBT or QSST status, or the parent intended QSub treatment).
Sole cause. The only reason the entity isn’t already an S corporation is that the election form wasn’t filed on time. A separate disqualifying problem, such as too many shareholders or an ineligible shareholder, takes you outside this procedure.
Consistent reporting. The entity and every shareholder must have filed returns as if the election were already in place, for every year from the intended effective date forward. A shareholder who reported the income on Schedule C instead of flowing it through from a K-1 breaks consistency.
Reasonable cause. For late S corp and QSub elections, you need reasonable cause for missing the deadline and must have acted quickly once you discovered the mistake. For late ESBT and QSST elections tied to an inadvertent invalid S election, the standard is that the failure was inadvertent rather than intentional.

What Reasonable Cause Looks Like

The IRS doesn’t publish an approved list of excuses. The reasonable cause statement you attach is where the request is won or lost, so the narrative should be specific: name the advisor you relied on, describe what you asked them to do, explain when you discovered the problem, and detail what you did next. The scenarios that tend to work involve reliance on a tax professional who failed to file or filed the wrong form, a misunderstanding of the deadline (common with newly formed entities), or an administrative error such as sending the form to the wrong address.

Vague statements like “we didn’t know about the deadline” carry little weight without context. The IRS is looking for ordinary business care. Forming an LLC in January, hiring an accountant in February, and the accountant forgetting to file Form 2553 by March 15 is a clean fact pattern. Never getting around to it for two years is not.

Relief Beyond Three Years and 75 Days

The three-year-and-75-day window has an exception in Section 5.04 of the procedure for corporations that have been operating as S corporations for years without realizing the election was never properly filed. To use it, all of the following must be true:¹

The entity is already a corporation. LLCs that also need a late corporate classification election cannot use this extended path.
The only defect is that Form 2553 wasn’t timely filed.
The corporation and all shareholders reported income consistent with S corp status for the intended first year and every year after.
At least six months have passed since the corporation filed its return for the first year it intended to be an S corp.
Neither the corporation nor any shareholder received an IRS notice questioning the S corp status within six months of the timely filed Form 1120-S for that first year.

The logic is that if the IRS never questioned the status and everyone behaved as though the election was in place, the government has little reason to deny retroactive relief.²

Which Elections the Procedure Covers

Rev. Proc. 2013-30 handles five related late elections:

Late S corporation elections by domestic corporations and eligible entities (including LLCs) that failed to file Form 2553 on time.
Late Electing Small Business Trust elections for trusts holding S corporation shares.
Late Qualified Subchapter S Trust elections for single-beneficiary trusts.
Late Qualified Subchapter S Subsidiary elections where the parent S corporation missed the Form 8869 deadline.
Late corporate classification elections on Form 8832, when an entity needed to be classified as a corporation on the same date the S election was supposed to take effect.

That last category matters for LLC owners. An LLC classified as a partnership or disregarded entity under the default rules has to be treated as a corporation before it can be an S corporation. An LLC that files Form 2553 alone is generally treated as simultaneously electing corporate classification, so a separate Form 8832 isn’t always needed. When something went wrong with either filing, Rev. Proc. 2013-30 lets you fix both at once, provided the intended effective dates match.²³

Preparing the Filing

The paperwork is short but unforgiving. A missing signature or omitted statement can stall or sink the request.

Forms

Use Form 2553 for a late S corporation election and Form 8869 for a late QSub election.⁴⁵ If an LLC also needs a late entity classification election, include Form 8832.

The Header Language

Write or type “FILED PURSUANT TO REV. PROC. 2013-30” in the top margin of the first page of your election form. This isn’t optional. Without it, the IRS will process the submission as an ordinary late election rather than a simplified relief request. If you’re attaching the election to a Form 1120-S, also write “INCLUDES LATE ELECTION(S) FILED PURSUANT TO REV. PROC. 2013-30” in the top margin of the 1120-S.⁶

Reasonable Cause Statement

Attach a narrative describing the specific facts that led to the missed deadline and what you did to fix it once discovered. The statement must be signed under penalties of perjury with this declaration: “Under penalties of perjury, I (we) declare that I (we) have examined this election, including accompanying documents, and, to the best of my (our) knowledge and belief, the election contains all the relevant facts relating to the election, and such facts are true, correct, and complete.”¹

Shareholder Signatures

Every person who held shares at any point from the intended effective date through the filing date must sign the election form. Their signatures confirm consent to the election and that their individual returns were filed consistently with S corp treatment. A missing shareholder signature is one of the most common reasons these requests stall.

Where and How to Submit

You have three delivery options:

Attach the completed election form to a current-year Form 1120-S. This is the most common route and keeps everything in one package.
Mail the election form on its own if a return has already been filed or isn’t yet due.
Fax the form, which creates an instant transmission record and typically gets processed faster.

The correct destination depends on where the corporation’s principal office sits. Businesses in eastern states (from Maine down to Georgia and west to Wisconsin) file with the Kansas City, MO 64999 service center or fax to 855-887-7734. Businesses in western and southern states (Alabama through Wyoming, plus Alaska and Hawaii) file with Ogden, UT 84201 or fax to 855-214-7520.⁶

After You File

The IRS will send a CP261 notice confirming the election has been accepted and stating its effective date, or a notice explaining why the request was rejected. There is no guaranteed processing timeline. As a general benchmark, faxed submissions tend to be processed within three to five weeks; mailed forms can take six to eight weeks or longer. If you haven’t received any response within 60 days of faxing or 90 days of mailing, call the IRS Business and Specialty Tax Line at 800-829-4933 to check the status.⁷

Keep copies of everything you submitted, along with your fax confirmation page or certified mail receipt. If the IRS loses the filing or disputes when it arrived, that proof is the only thing standing between you and a rejected request.

If You Don’t Qualify

If the request is denied or you fall outside the eligibility rules, the formal alternative is a private letter ruling from the IRS National Office. The procedural requirements and user fees are set out in Rev. Proc. 2025-1 or its successor for the current year.² PLR user fees for S election relief run into thousands of dollars and the process typically takes several months. Most taxpayers use a tax attorney or enrolled agent experienced with ruling requests. Rev. Proc. 2013-30 exists specifically to help you avoid that route, which is why the eligibility conditions and filing details matter so much.

One boundary worth naming: Rev. Proc. 2013-30 covers elections that were never properly filed. It doesn’t cover an S election that was filed correctly and later became invalid because the corporation stopped meeting the eligibility requirements or an impermissible shareholder transfer occurred. That situation is handled under IRC 1362(f), which lets the IRS waive an inadvertent termination if the corporation acted within a reasonable time and shareholders agree to any required adjustments.⁸ If your facts involve both a late election and a later termination, you may need relief under both provisions.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Rev. Proc. 2013-30
2
Internal Revenue Service. Late Election Relief
3
Internal Revenue Service. Entity Classification Election (Form 8832)
4
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 2553, Election by a Small Business Corporation
5
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8869, Qualified Subchapter S Subsidiary Election
6
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 2553
7
Internal Revenue Service. Filing Requirements for Filing Status Change
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 1362 – Election; Revocation; Termination