Best Practice for paying Form 5330 Excise taxes through EFTPS

[justanotheradmin]

We've recently had several clients struggle to submit excise tax payments online through EFTPS. 

EFTPS doesn't seem to be of any help when we call. 

The Form 5330 is not available when the employer is logged in, nor there there a way to select the specific excise tax section. 

I tried looking somethings up - does the IRS need to make Form 5330 available for that specific EIN? and then the Employer can see it on EFTPS? Does the employer need to call EFTPS? 

Should employers be going through enrollment for a business tax account under Direct Pay? 

Does anyone have any tips? I feel like there is something obvious I'm missing, but I've had a few coworkers go through this as well without any resolution. 

[SomeGuy]

My experience is that you can't do an e-filing of the 5330 unless you buy special software through SAXTAX.  

https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2022-other-tax-exempt-entities-modernized-e-file-mef-providers-form-5330

Which means you end up doing a paper filing of the 5330.

[mbvs]

The list of approved providers has expanded (finally!) since 2022.    ASC & FTW has a 5330 E-Filing solution as an add on to their 5500 Forms module. 

https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2025-other-tax-exempt-entities-modernized-e-file-mef-providers-form-5330-0

 

[ConnieStorer]

Not sure this would work but have you tried paying through Pay.Gov?

[justanotheradmin]

HI Everyone, 

Thanks for the comments. I should clarify - my question is specifically how to pay the excise tax - not how to file the Form 5330 electronically. Since it appears that paying and filing are two different things. 

My understanding is that even if the form is filed on paper (with an exception), the excise tax should now be remitted electronically, but perhaps someone can clarify if I'm mistaken. 

[Paul I]

@justanotheradmin I experienced a similar issue attempting to pay an 4979 excise tax that was reportable on a 5330.  The IRS agent several times said the payment should be paid electronically, and said using EFTPS would be the best approach.  The company does not use EFTPS for filing any taxes.  After an unsuccessful search for a vendor to work with, I put together a set of steps for the client to follow to get the taxes paid.  If you have not yet been successful (and haven't given up and sent in a check with fingers crossed it will not get lost in the IRS bureaucracy), you may find this helpful.

Paying 4979 excise tax reported on 5330.docx

[justanotheradmin]

Thank you!!

[Paul I]

@justanotheradmin as a follow up, the client signed up for an EFTPS account.  They are still waiting for a PIN so the process is taking several weeks.  Once they had their account, they let me know that neither the 5330 nor 4979 appeared in the list of taxes that can be paid via EFTPS 800-555-4477.  The agent on the phone told me that these taxes cannot be paid through EFTPS and said the taxes had to be paid by check.

Right now we don't know which IRS agent is correct (although one would think the EFTPS agent should know better).

[ESOP Guy]

Not sure if this helps or not but a bit on my experience on paying these excise taxes. 

We use FT Williams so my experience is linked to that software. 

We had issues with payments for clients and we were filing the 5330 late as we didn't know they had gone over the deduction limit until we were doing the annual work.  And for ESOPs that can easily happen after 7/31 for a 12/31 PYE.   

With FT Williams you can set up paying via ACH when you e-sign the forms.  

But if you are filing late you must agree to pay the same day you file.  This used to not be very clear in the instructions but it looks like FT Williams has updated this a bit.  But once we had clients agreeing to pay while e-signing and setting up the ACH data via FT Williams we stopped having problems.   You can put the ACH information into the FT Williams screen you e-sign.   

I have only been part of this twice in around 2 years and I have been helping people but we literally had to get the client on a Teams call and we talked them through the process as they e-sign and set up payment.  I had the person who had the client relationship set up a reminder to email the client to see if they saw the payment leave their bank account a few days later just to make sure it worked.  That is how we found out about all of this.  The first time I was talking to the client about another subject and I happened to ask if the payment happened and all went well.  The CFO mentioned they hadn't seen the IRS take the money from their bank account like she had expected.  We looked into and that is how we found out about the above.   It was very painful the first time.