uh...oh..friend may have screwed up royally

It's probably 50-50 if it would get past whoever opens up the envelope for IRS. Since the return was already filed, I presume your friend included a payment voucher or at minimum put his SSN on the check. If it makes it into the banking system, you're probably okay. The banks process millions of checks every day and the days of clerks looking at signature cards to verify signatures are long gone.

I would suggest your friend call the bank or go online to see if the check cleared. If it didn't, one option would be to pay a stop payment fee to the bank and just re-issue the check. Yes, he also can and should go on the IRS website to see if they processed the payment, but I don't know if they keep that updated in real-time.

My experience is that the IRS tends to cash checks fairly quickly, even if they are behind on processing the actual return. Your friend probably has enough time between now and April 18th to track down whether the check was processed. If he determines that it was not or goes the stop payment route, suggest he pay electronically rather than by paper check through the mail.

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According to Rick snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com:

My suggestion would be to do nothing. The penalty is 0.5% per month, in this case about $5. I agree that the most likely outcome is that they cash the check, the bank doesn't care, everything is fine.

If there's no sign of the check by mid-May, he can use EFTPS to pay electronically.

I suspect John is right about the most likely outcome. The days when every check was scrutinized are long behind us.

But for future reference, I strongly recommend everyone make any future payments through the payment screen on the IRS website. It takes only a few minutes, it's free, and you have no worries about whether the IRS received the money timely.

IRS Direct Pay is here:

EFTPS is here: