This is a summary of the pieces of the article that mattered the most to us and our clients.
- The IRS is returning employees who used to process tax returns and other paperwork back to their old jobs for the next eight months to help the agency cut through its massive backlog, Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in an internal email Wednesday night.
- The paper processing problems have delayed tax refunds and also triggered automatic notices to taxpayers that they owe money and may be assessed additional taxes, even though in many cases they’d already replied to previous notices but those replies were sitting in mail piles.
- The IRS entered the start of tax filing season this year, which began Jan. 24, with more than 8 million original and amended individual returns unprocessed, another roughly 1.5 million unprocessed original and amended business returns and close to 5 million other letters and documents from taxpayers in response to IRS notices.
- The IRS expects to return reassigned employees to their current positions at the end of September, when the 2022 federal fiscal year ends.