Posted on 02/13/2022 3:50:58 PM PST by Libloather
Taxpayers hoping to treat themselves this year with their tax refund money may have to wait till next year for their reward after the IRS revealed its processing backlog is more than twice as big as it previously reported.
The Internal Revenue Service is still struggling to process close to 24 million tax return filings from last year, according to a report by the Washington Post.
That's more than twice as much as the 11.4 million unprocessed business and individual returns that the tax agency reported in mid-December 2021.
The bureaucratic snarl threatens to delay many tax refunds for 10 months or more.
Data crunched by the DC newspaper showed that 23.7 million individual and business returns were being held up because they require 'manual process' -- meaning someone in the tax office has to work on them rather than passing them through on the automated system.
This human bottleneck means that 2022 processing will also be affected, the Treasury Department warned in January.
There are 9.7 million paper returns waiting processing, 4.1 million had errors with stimulus payments, Covid-19 relief funds or other problems and 4.1 million returns were amended after being filed. There were 5.8 million sets of correspondence between the tax office and Americans that had to be resolved still before the filings were signed off.
National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins penned a letter recommending the IRS delay or suspend some tax collections and penalties because of the backlog.
'The coronavirus pandemic has created enormous challenges for taxpayers, tax professionals, and the IRS. It is time to take steps to ameliorate the situation,' the NATP letter stated. 'Implementing reasonable penalty relief measures, the IRS can offer immediately, are necessary to help not only taxpayers and tax professionals but also the IRS during these challenging times.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I called to make an appointment at the Chattanooga office to discuss. I ended up speaking to a nice representative who checked into it (took about an hour on the phone). She said our account was frozen. Who knows why, politics? She said she released it and that we should have the $$ in less than 6 weeks.
I wish we could be as lax getting money to them.
The IRS should stop Spying for the Democrats and do the job they were hired to do
It’s amazing, with Amazon I go on line and order, pay, receive stuff and return stuff and get like INSTANT credit to my account with refunds etc... Imagine that, huh folks !
How is that that Amazon can do that but the IRS is totally useless with a budget of 12.4 BILLION and biden wants to ..... increase funding for the IRS by $80 billion ? Ya right that’s gonna help, we are all a bunch of chumps to put up with this B.S.
Our government is inept, incompetent, and corrupt.
“Who knows why, politics?”
The same reason why my tenant’s application for the Emergency Rent Assistance Program (New York) has been “under review” for 2021 for the last 3 1/2 mos. I vote across the conservative line.
As a small business I have to file a 940 and 941. In early 2021 the IRS was sending me letters saying I had not paid. I had paid and they had cashed the checks. I had to call them numerous times to straighten out their error. Also snail mailed and faxed them the checks.
They spent a lot of IRS time straightening out money that they wanted while they neglected paying out money that they owed other people.
File electronically if you want a refund.
Penalties aren’t really that bad.
There really is no longer any need to collect income taxes.
The government does not have to take in enough to pay its expenses.
The current financial system just allows government to print as much money as it wants to spend.
Get rid of the IRS. There is no need for that bureaucracy when they just keep the money printing presses running.
I always try to owe as much as possible without paying the penalty.
—
The perfect refund is either a very small refund or as you mention, owing more, but not reaching the penalty threshold.
No, no, no.
File paper. Why make their job easier?
Just send them copies if they cannot find the original?
Better yet, mail it certified with signature request.
Maybe IRS is busy investigating Trump supporters, so they’re slow on normal work.
Sadly, that won’t work with today’s lazy incompetent IRS. I have a client that had a $20K overpayment on his 2019 return applied to 2020. He owes $20K on his 2020 return, but they haven’t processed his 2019 return YET, so they keep billing him for the 2020 balance. The lazy incompetent bastards of today’s IRS won’t even respond to my letters after a year and a half!
I still wait on my refund ($600). The funny thing is that my state folks only took eight weeks to turn around that return. I’ve talked to the IRS folks in August and Jan 2022...which they always push back...there’s this backlog. I even went and suggested to my Senator that a $50 a month ‘gift’ after 12 months ought to be mandated on IRS for each person affected.
I see your point. But if you have a refund coming, and you want it some time this year or next, you'd better file electronically. I had to file by paper three years ago and am still waiting for the refund.
Key take away:
When anticipating a refund, merely check the box that says, “Apply to next year’s return.” Then adjust withholding and/or quarterly tax payments accordingly.
That way, you aren’t waiting on the government, and you keep control.
A +
If they don’t process your prior return, there’s no overpayment to apply. Let’s say your overpayment was a thousand or few thousand and you try to apply it. You’ll get billed for the overpayment that you wanted applied since they have never processed the prior return to know what you have available.
I hear what you are saying. Just not sure that position, if taken by the IRS, would hold up in court.
If the IRS cannot prove their position, then any penalties or interest would be disregarded.
Obviously, we have to keep records of everything.
Remember the line from “The Firm”: “I don’t care about an audit, they just better not win.”
But how expensive is that fight? Attorneys want to be paid. We are self employed and our income is not always predictable. We overpaid on our estimated because our expenses on our farm business were greater than anticipated.
Going into this next tax season is going to be a mess for us until this is resolved.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.