SEP IRA Excess contribution for 2020

[chungster123]

I contributed an excess of 6400 to my SEP IRA for tax year 2020. Instead of filing an excess contribution form and paying taxes on it potentially, can I make an amendment to 2019 tax return to make the overage amount count towards 2019?

FYI, the contributions were made early last year in March and I have room claim more SEP IRA contributions on my 2019 self employment income which includes the excess based on my 2019 self employment income.

I just do not want to deal with paying taxes on return of excess forms or rolling it forward to 2021 tax year since I do not know what my self employment income looks like yet for this year.

[MinhT1]

You can no longer make contributions to your SEP-IRA for tax year 2019, even if you amend your 2019 tax return.

The deadline for contributing to the SEP-IRA for 2019 has expired.

The IRS says in this document::

You must deposit contributions for a year by the due date (including extensions) for filing your federal income tax return for the year. If you obtain an extension for filing your tax return, you have until the end of that extension period to deposit the contribution, regardless of when you actually file the return.

[chungster123]

The deposits for 2020 were made BEFORE the filing due date for 2019.  I was going to apply those 2020 contributions towards 2020, but now that I have an excess, I am simply just amending my 2019 and applying the contributions towards 2019. Is that not possible?

[dmertz]

Yes, it's possible, but you'll want to indicate in your explanation on the Form 1040-X that either you simply made an error when originally reporting the amount that was contributed to the SEP IRA for 2019, or, if the March SEP contribution was made after you filed your 2019 tax return, you can indicate that the SEP contribution for 2019 was increased before the filing deadline but after you filed your original tax return.

This is possible because it's the responsibility of the employer (in this case, you as self-employed), not the SEP-IRA custodian to track the year for which the SEP contribution is made.  The SEP-IRA custodian only tracks and reports the year in which a SEP contribution is made.