You will hear a number from a forum, or from a friend who had a hard season. A repeated story is not a statute. It makes a rough excuse for throwing a year away.
Preparers repeat a six year enforcement story. People pass it along as if it were the edge of the pile. This site will not print that digit as law, because the manual was not opened on 29 September 2026.
The public source remains the IRS past due page. That is the page that talks about substitutes, refund windows, and years that were never sent, in language you can read without a manual.
If someone tells you to discard the oldest year because of that story, leave the year on the stack. Pull the transcript before anyone decides the year does not exist.
Source. A substitute can omit deductions, a deficiency notice can follow, a refund claim is generally three years from the return due date, and a lender may ask for filed returns. Read 29 September 2026 at https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/filing-past-due-tax-returns
Putting the years into one stack and preparing them is the work this address does. Answering a levy, a lien or a deficiency notice on your behalf is representative work that belongs with a firm that does it, and bargaining a balance down is not something that happens here. No CPA license sits at this desk, so signed reports on statements go elsewhere too. All of that is spelled out at more length on the disclosures page.
Throwing out the bottom of the stack to match a story is how a refund year disappears. The transcript is the cheaper truth.
Tell us the story you were told, in a sentence. We will not promote it into a rule.
One sentence about what a forum told you is enough. The years stay listed underneath.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.