Thank you for the quick response.
I appreciate the clarifications. I must have misinterpreted the IRS advice to "check with your tax preparer" and didn't have the page specifying "6-9 months" visible when preparing the question. As for the 40-foot truck of returns, I must have wrongly assumed there would be some process of receiving the mail, recording its arrival, then throwing it on the shelf until it is fully processed with the rest of the returns, which in retrospect may require more steps than I'd originally considered. In the future, if I want confirmation that the IRS has at least received the return, I should instead send the return by registered postal mail. Again, thank you.
