IRS Plans To Resume Collection Notices
As of April 29, 2023, the IRS said it had 3.8 million unprocessed individual returns. These include tax year 2022 returns, 2021 returns that need review or correction, and late filed prior-year returns. Of these, 2.4 million returns require special handling such as correcting errors. The agency has another 1.4 million paper returns to review and process. It takes the IRS over 21 days to issue a refund in these cases because they require special handling although an employee typically does not have to contact the taxpayer, the agency said. The General Accounting Office said in a report issued in December 2022 that the IRS had a backlog of about 10.5 million paper returns and returns stopped for errors. While the IRS addressed the backlog of 2021 paper returns, the GAO said that as of late September 2022, the agency “had about 12.4 million returns to process, resulting in refund delays for millions of taxpayers.” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said during his ceremonial swearing-in in April that the IRS staff was “already delivering on the promise of the Inflation Reduction Act. During the 2023 tax filing season, the IRS has provided taxpayers with a dramatically better experience than they have seen for several years. We have answered more calls from taxpayers, helped more people at our Taxpayer Assistance Centers and provided new online services for taxpayers who want to interact with us in this way.”
[as reported in Credit & Collection 5/12/23 e-newsletter]