some reassignments, perhaps?
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
editor’s note: this is part i of a series on fixing the irs. part ii will explore medium-term and longer-term solutions. part iii will look at legislative solutions.
everybody gripes about the irs, but nobody does anything about it.
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well, almost nobody. on april 21, america’s national tax advocate, erin m. collins, marched into the house of representatives, sat down before the subcommittee on government operations and told them two things:
- what the problems at the irs are, and
- what to do about them.
the main problems she identified are no secret to taxpayers and tax practitioners, though members of congress seem to be either unaware or uncaring.
the main problems
collins itemized the obvious in four clear points:
- taxpayers have been experiencing significant delays in receiving their tax refunds because of unprecedented irs backlogs in the processing of original and amended tax returns.
- taxpayers have been experiencing additional delays in receiving their tax refunds because of irs delays in processing taxpayer correspondence.
- taxpayers had more difficulty reaching the irs by telephone in 2021 than in any prior year.
- taxpayers found that the irs’s where’s my refund? and where’s my amended return? tools often could not answer those questions.
but collins wasn’t just the bearer of bad news. she also bore solutions, all of which seem workable if the irs and congress have the will.
irs kryptonite
collins pointed out that in 2021, almost all e-filed returns were processed without delay. still, at the close of the 2021 filing season, some 35.3 million returns were still being held for manual review. half of them were paper returns that didn’t necessarily have any problems, and half had been suspended because of discrepancies.
paper, she said, “is the irs’s kryptonite, and the irs is still buried in it.”
short-term solutions
collins offered several short-term solutions that could almost immediately ameliorate, if not definitely resolve, the backlog and delay problem, at least a little, at least for a while.
- continue the “all-hands-on-deck” surge strategy that is reassigning employees to process tax returns, though obviously this means that something else isn’t getting done.
- consider increasing compensation for processing employees, minimizing hiring lags and utilizing outside consultants. she thinks the base pay of these employees, $24,749, is a little low. in fact, it’s about $100 less than the average annual salary at the mcdonald’s corporation.
- provide penalty relief for 2020 and 2021 tax returns when failure to comply, pay or deposit was not done with willful intent. this would free up irs agents by reducing administrative burdens.
- suspend all automated collection notices until the irs gets current in processing all returns and correspondence.
- add a dedicated team to accelerate processing refunds and employers’ quarterly returns.
- include a “dashboard” on irs.gov so the public can be aware of general backlogs and estimated delays.