five recommendations are offered to improve processing. start with scanners.
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by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
here’s something you’d better explain to your tax clients, lest you get blamed:
more: news on irs is maybe sort of a little bit good | why we all hate the tax code | how bullish are you this tax season? | accountants’ top problems for tax season 2023 | tax season 2023: better or worse?
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- the irs is over its head in paperwork.
- its computer system was antiquated 30 years ago.
- its staff is overwhelmed and demoralized.
- it’s just barely clearing up last year’s backlog of paper returns, and
- certain members of congress are trying to make things worse.
so don’t expect the irs to answer the phone.
don’t expect them to respond to your mail.
don’t expect them to know that you met a particular deadline.
and if you file a paper return, don’t expect to see a refund for several months, and don’t be surprised if you’re alerted to a math error that they themselves made in transcribing your paper digits to digital digits.
egregiously bad at processing
not for the first time, the national taxpayer advocate erin m. collins has informed congress that the irs is egregiously bad at processing tax returns and cooperating with taxpayers.
“the irs has been operating with staffing shortages, using antiquated technology, relying on a human assembly line, and deploying outdated manual practices where modern technology offers a practical alternative,” collins said in her annual report to congress.
the problem dates back to the covid-19 days, but colins says that’s no excuse.
“[t]he irs missed opportunities before and during the pandemic, including not expeditiously using the $1.5 billion of additional funds provided by the american rescue plan act of 2021 to hire additional employees, and not implementing technology solutions such as return scanning,” collins wrote. “instead of utilizing more technology to unbury itself from under its paper mountain, the irs mainly relied on trying to hire and reassigning its limited staff to surge teams to assist with paper backlogs.”
as of december 9, 2022, the irs had a backlog of 5.1 million pieces of taxpayer correspondence and accounts management cases, plus 2.6 million paper returns, plus 1.5 million amended returns.
the ramifications of math errors
taxpayers who filed error-free e-file returns generally got timely refunds. but those with math errors got earmarked for manual processing, resulting in delays of many months and sometimes more than a year.
the main cause of math errors was taxpayer attempts to reconcile recovery rebate credits or advance child care credits, and sometimes both. it wasn’t easy, and with nine out of 10 phone calls to the irs going unanswered, with tax assistance centers closed or unavailable, with unopened correspondence stacked on pallets in shipping containers, a lot of people got it wrong.
the irs itself made some math errors in inaccurate manual transcriptions of paper returns. incredibly, the service is still unable to use scanning technology to make those transcriptions. many state revenue services incorporated that technology decades ago.
by november of 2022, the irs had issued over 17 million notices of math errors. that meant that about that many responses were added to the backlog of paper returns.
the irs has been using an effective automation tool called fix ers to resolve many – but by no means all – sorts of errors. without much effort, the irs could upgrade that tool to handle more kinds of errors.
the irs says it’s working on that.
warning
while the nta report was a warning to congress, it should also warn taxpayers and tax practitioners to take certain actions:
- avoid filing a paper return.
- don’t make any math errors.
- if you are informed of a math error, don’t assume it was your error.
- don’t assume refunds will arrive in the near future.
the nta called on the irs to reinvent itself as a modern agency. recent new funding of nearly $80 billion may make that possible, but only if the additional funding is prudently spent hiring an advanced workforce, replacing outdated technology and otherwise improving taxpayer services.
the report to congress makes five recommendations on improving the processing of tax returns.
- expedite processing of paper returns by deploying scanning technology starting in the 2023 season.
- prioritize returns claiming refunds prior to those with tax due or no tax due.
- automate error resolution for all error codes using fixers or similar tool starting in the 2023 season.
- develop an irs.gov dashboard to provide weekly information on number of returns in inventory, number beyond normal processing time, number in suspense status and projected timeframes for working through the backlog.
- provide inventory-level status updates for each specific area of submission processing to all irs business units.