Form 5500-EZ Late Filer Relief Under Rev. Proc. 2015-32: Fee, Form 14704, Filing

If you missed a Form 5500-EZ filing for a solo 401(k) or similar one-participant retirement plan, Form 5500-EZ late filer penalty relief is available under Revenue Procedure 2015-32: a flat $500 per delinquent return, capped at $1,500 per plan, in place of penalties that can otherwise reach $150,000 per year. You have to act before the IRS formally assesses a penalty, and the submission has to be on paper with a specific transmittal form attached.¹

What You Owe Without the Program

The IRS can assess $250 for every day a required Form 5500-EZ goes unfiled, up to $150,000 per plan year. Those amounts come from Section 403 of the SECURE Act of 2019 and apply to returns due after December 31, 2019, replacing a much smaller penalty schedule.¹ Three missed years can theoretically expose a plan sponsor to $450,000 in penalties. The relief program brings that down to $1,500.

Who Can Use the Program

Two plan types qualify. The primary group is one-participant plans, meaning plans that cover only a business owner (and optionally the owner’s spouse) or one or more partners in a partnership (and their spouses). A 2%-or-greater S corporation shareholder is treated as a partner for this purpose.² The moment your plan covers a non-spouse employee, it stops being a one-participant plan and stops being eligible for this relief.

The second group is foreign plans maintained outside the United States primarily for nonresident aliens, provided they have IRS annual reporting obligations.³

Both categories share a threshold requirement: the plan cannot be subject to Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA-covered plans use a Department of Labor program instead, covered at the end of this article.

The CP 283 Cutoff

You have to submit before the IRS penalizes you. The program is closed for any return where the IRS has already issued a CP 283 notice, which is the notice that formally assesses a late-filing penalty.³

A CP 403 or CP 406 notice is different. Those are delinquency reminders — the IRS is telling you a return appears to be missing. They do not disqualify you from the program.⁴ If you have a CP 403 or CP 406 in hand, the reduced fee is still available. Only a CP 283 closes the door.

Check That You Actually Had to File

Before writing a check, confirm you owed a return in the first place. A one-participant plan only has to file Form 5500-EZ for a given year if the total assets of that plan, combined with any other one-participant plans the same employer maintains, exceeded $250,000 at the end of the plan year.⁵ A solo 401(k) that held $180,000 on December 31, with no other one-participant plans in the picture, generated no filing obligation for that year.

The one exception is the plan’s final year. When a plan terminates and distributes all assets, a return is required regardless of the balance.⁵

The Fee

One delinquent return: $500
Two delinquent returns for the same plan: $1,000
Three or more delinquent returns for the same plan: $1,500

The $1,500 cap is per submission for a single plan. Five missed years still costs $1,500 total.³

Pay by check or money order made out to “United States Treasury.” Write the plan’s EIN and plan number on the check. One check covering every delinquent return for the plan is fine, and it gets attached to Form 14704.³

Putting the Submission Together

The IRS processes these packages by hand, and small mistakes can cause the agency to route your returns through the standard penalty system instead of the relief program. A clean submission has four elements.

Use the Right Form Year

Each delinquent year needs its own Form 5500-EZ, and it has to be the version of the form for that plan year, not the current year. The IRS keeps prior-year forms on its website going back to 1990. Print each year’s correct version, complete it on paper in black ink, and sign it in original ink.¹

Mark Each Return in Red Ink

Every return in the package needs to be flagged so IRS staff process it through the relief program. In red ink, write across the top margin of the first page of each return: “Delinquent Return Submitted under Rev. Proc. 2015-32, Eligible for Penalty Relief.”³ More recent form versions include a Check Box D that serves the same function; write the notation anyway to eliminate any routing ambiguity.

Attach Form 14704

Form 14704 is the transmittal schedule that holds the submission together. It lists your name, address, EIN, plan number, the plan year ending dates for each delinquent return, and the total payment. Attach it to the front of the oldest delinquent return in the package. For a submission covering 2019, 2020, and 2021, Form 14704 goes on top of the 2019 return. Leaving this form out can cause the IRS to deny relief and assess full penalties on every return in the package.³

Mail It to Ogden

Submissions under this program cannot go through the EFAST2 electronic system, even though current-year Form 5500-EZ returns can now be e-filed.⁶ The full package — Form 14704, all delinquent returns, and the check — goes to:³

Internal Revenue Service
1973 North Rulon White Blvd.
Ogden, UT 84404-0020

Use certified mail with return receipt or a trackable private delivery service. The IRS does not send an acceptance letter, so the mailing receipt is your only proof of delivery. Processing is manual and can take several months.

After You Mail the Package

Silence is the sign it worked. The IRS generally does not send an approval letter, and no confirmation notice arrives. You know the submission was accepted because no CP 283 penalty notice shows up.³

If something is wrong, the IRS will contact you. The problems that trigger contact are a missing Form 14704, inconsistencies between the transmittal schedule and the returns, missing signatures, and incorrect payment amounts.³ Keep copies of the completed forms, the check, Form 14704, and your mailing receipt for at least seven years.

Reasonable Cause: A Riskier Alternative

You can skip the $500 fee entirely by attaching a signed statement to your late return explaining why you had reasonable cause for the delay. If the IRS accepts the explanation, no fee, no penalty.¹

The risk is real. If the IRS rejects the reasonable cause argument, it issues a CP 283, and that return is then permanently locked out of Rev. Proc. 2015-32.⁴ Your exposure jumps from $500 to as much as $150,000. Absent genuinely compelling circumstances such as a natural disaster, a serious medical emergency, or reliance on a professional who failed you, paying the $500 through the standard program is the safer path.

If Your Plan Has Non-Spouse Employees

A plan that covers any employee beyond the business owners and their spouses is almost certainly subject to ERISA Title I and cannot use Rev. Proc. 2015-32. Those plans file the full Form 5500, and late filings go through the Department of Labor’s Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program. Small plans pay up to $750 per late filing, capped at $1,500 per plan; large plans pay up to $2,000 per filing, capped at $4,000 per plan; plans sponsored by a 501(c)(3) organization get a $750 per-plan cap. The DOL program is likewise only available before the agency issues a formal notice of intent to assess penalties.⁷

1
Internal Revenue Service. Penalty Relief Program for Form 5500-EZ Late Filers
2
Internal Revenue Service. Form 5500 Corner
3
Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2015-32
4
Internal Revenue Service. Form 5500-EZ Delinquent Filing Penalty Relief Frequently Asked Questions
5
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 5500-EZ
6
Internal Revenue Service. Mandatory Electronic Filing for Certain Form 8955-SSA and 5500-EZ Returns
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program