Inside Income Service commissioner Charles Rettig instructed lawmakers the IRS has been working arduous this previous submitting season throughout a congressional listening to Thursday as he heard first-hand testimony from their constituents in regards to the issues they encountered.
“IRS staff need to do extra to assist taxpayers,” he stated in his opening assertion. “We would like to have the ability to reply the telephones and reply to questions. We need to be prepared, at any time when disaster hits, to ship financial reduction rapidly — as our staff demonstrated repeatedly through the present pandemic, working lengthy hours to ship essential applications. Throughout this difficult interval, the IRS has been working in an ‘all-hands-on deck’ method, leaving nothing off the desk for consideration to enhance total service.”
Nationwide Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins spotlighted the persevering with issues she has been seeing. “The most important issues taxpayers encountered final yr – and are persevering with to come across this yr – have been return processing delays, correspondence processing delays, issue reaching the IRS by phone, and the lack to acquire info from the IRS’s The place’s My Refund? and The place’s My Amended Return? Instruments,” she stated in her opening assertion.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig
Throughout her annual report back to Congress, she referred to as consideration to the lingering issues with processing paper tax returns, which grew to become particularly acute through the early months of the pandemic in 2020 when many IRS services have been closed and unopened mail stacked up in storage. “Paper is the IRS’s kryptonite,” stated Collins. Although the IRS has been catching up on its backlog of hundreds of thousands of tax returns from final yr and is right down to 2.9 million paper returns acquired in 2021, new returns and correspondence are piling up this tax season. Collins stated that as of April 8, 2022, the IRS had in its stock about 20.9 million tax returns and about 5.three million items of taxpayer correspondence and accounts administration instances.
By April 8, the IRS processed greater than 99 million particular person federal tax returns and issued greater than 70 million refunds totaling greater than $222 billion. “Whereas the submitting season has offered no main disruptions or surprises, we all know we’ve quite a lot of work to do in lots of different areas of the IRS,” stated Rettig. “The IRS continues to concentrate on working to cut back paper correspondence stock and course of paper tax returns from 2021 in addition to enhance our response to an unprecedented degree of telephone demand — conditions which have been compounded by the pandemic and associated points.”
He famous that in fiscal yr 2021, the IRS acquired greater than 15 million particular person paper returns and had a considerably greater error charge on particular person returns primarily because of challenges related to reconciling funds acquired via stimulus applications like Financial Impression Funds. The IRS acquired excess of 10 million returns the place taxpayers didn’t correctly reconcile the 2 EIPs acquired in 2020 towards the quantity of the Restoration Rebate Credit score acknowledged on the tax return they filed in 2021. Equally, greater than 10 million people reported unemployment compensation on their return that was topic to the exclusion enacted by Congress through the 2021 submitting season. As well as, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers elected to make use of 2019 reasonably than 2020 as the bottom yr for figuring out their Earned Earnings Tax Credit score, a legislative change by Congress that was enacted after the IRS’s know-how growth for the 2021 submitting season had been accomplished, Rettig identified. Every of these returns required guide assessment and determination by an IRS worker.
“Congress, at a minimal, should useful resource the IRS appropriately — after which maintain IRS management accountable for ensuring these sources are correctly deployed to offer the American folks the extent of service they deserve from this vitally necessary company,” stated Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Virginia, who chaired the listening to.
Although Congress has been placing these obstacles in the best way, lawmakers took the IRS to job for failing to assist constituents who had spent hours on the telephone attempting to succeed in the company for assist. Mike Solomon, a resident of the District of Columbia, stated in a video performed by one of many lawmakers about how he had filed his taxes via TurboTax, however acquired no refund from the IRS after months glided by nor any additional info.
“I repeatedly checked the IRS web site for standing updates, however acquired nothing however a generic message saying my return had been acquired and was being processed, however nothing else,” he stated. “Ultimately after months of no info, I tried to contact the IRS through e mail, however received no reply to my message. I then was capable of finding telephone quantity however referred to as and located myself in a maze of response that at all times ended up with both being disconnected or left at a voicemail field the place I couldn’t depart a message. Within the meantime, I’m presently in between jobs and have three youngsters at house, so the cash from my refund would go a good distance towards serving to my household, however I nonetheless don’t have any info as to the place issues stand and once I may be capable to obtain that cash.”
His story will not be an outlier, famous Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton, D-District of Columbia, pointing to a brand new report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace. “Within the 2021 submitting season, the IRS acquired 199 million calls, greater than 4 instances extra calls than the company acquired in 2019, two years in the past,” she stated. “On the finish of the 2021 tax-filing season, the IRS had 5.9 million items of unanswered correspondence, almost thrice greater than the two million items in 2019. And as Mike described, GAO additionally discovered that the ‘The place’s My Refund’ device will not be really useful in explaining why a refund is delayed.”
Rettig pledged to assist taxpayers who have been experiencing such delays and he provided to present his mobile phone quantity to lawmakers to contact him on behalf of their constituents. In one of many different movies, a younger mom mentioned how her congressional consultant had lastly helped her get via to the IRS after being unable to succeed in anybody there by telephone on her personal, however she was nonetheless awaiting her a lot wanted refund.