The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will begin processing returns with depreciation forms (form 4562) on February 10, 2013.  They also announced that those returns claiming  education credits will begin to be processed on February 14.

These two issues affected by far the largest majority of the returns which could not be filed on January 30, the delayed start of this years’ filing season.   Most of the remaining returns which cannot yet be filed relate to lesser used business credits and some energy credits.  The production deduction and passive activity losses are also delayed which are the most common remaining items affecting several of my clients.   It is still possible you could be affected, but much less likely now.  The IRS is estimating that filing for these still delayed returns will be available by the first week of March.

The depreciation form was released significantly earlier than the original projection, so maybe they are making progress at the IRS and some of those other forms will also be released earlier than March.  We will have to wait and see.

In fact, even though the IRS will accept these returns now, your software provider may not be able to electronically file them for another day or so.  I know my software does not release the depreciation form until 10AM today, February 11.