Didn’t get a password reset email from the Franchise Tax Board?

So you clicked the “lost password” link on the California Franchise Tax Board web site and didn’t get the email you were supposed to get with a temporary password?

Here’s why. From the mail log of the receiving mail system (mine):

Jun 15 22:47:53 dallas postfix/smtpd[14986]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from smtp.ftb.ca.gov[168.240.17.20]: 550 5.7.1 : Recipient address rejected: Message rejected due to: SPF fail - not authorized. Please see http://www.openspf.net/Why?s=mfrom;id=no_reply@ftb.ca.gov;ip=168.240.17.20;r=NOBODY@REDACTED.com; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=

Looks like the Franchise Tax Board has an outdated SPF record. Servers configured to reject mail with an incorrect SPF record will do just that – reject the mail from the FTB. Either write to their IT department and ask them to update their SPF record to reflect the IP address or range they are actually sending mail from (good luck with that), or have them send the password to an email account that doesn’t check SPF records (or at least won’t fail them). You can choose that at the bottom of the page where you enter the answers to your security questions.