DirectPay: Wrong Tax Year

[optx103]

Looking for a "second opinion" from any tax experts on this:  A family member discovered that the IRS won't make an auto-pay debit for less than the agreed-upon monthly amount on a payment plan, so needed to use DirectPay for the final pay-off. Trouble is, the payment was wrongly marked for tax year 2020 instead of 2019 (plan was started in 2020). Will they automatically apply this to any remaining balance, or must the payment be re-initiated and then they'll eventually refund the excess? Thanks!

[fanfare]

If you made a payment for 2020 tax due via Direct Pay,

then IRS is still waiting for the final payment of your installment plan for 2019.

If you call IRS, they might be able to reassign that payment to the correct year.

But don't count on it.

[optx103]

Thanks for the reply. No other balances outstanding. The final payment was just mistakenly tagged for tax year 2020. So the question is whether they're likely to apply that amount to anything due or just refund it. So far it's sounding like their system might be pretty rigid about it, and yet some folks get their refunds automatically applied to whatever they owe.