Taxes

The IRS in 2021 “Horrendous” — Says the National Taxpayer Advocate

Bottom line: Don’t file by paper in 2022 to get a quick refund

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels

On Jan. 12, 2022, the National Taxpayer Advocate, Erin M. Collins, said in her report to Congress, that there was no way to sugarcoat the 2021 season at the IRS — it was “horrendous.”

This was what it said tens of millions of people had experienced according to the Advocate. This was on page 5 of the 58-page Executive Summary, which spent most of the remainder of the Report explaining how they were mistreated. She said that 2021 was the most challenging tax season ever.

For example, according to the report, the IRS finished the 2021 filing season with a backlog of 35.3 million returns that required manual processing. When taxpayers called the IRS for assistance, only about 11 percent reached a customer service rep. Hold times for taxpayers who got through averaged about 23 minutes. In addition, the IRS’s IT systems desperately need upgrades.

The Backlog

Moreover, the IRS backlog as of mid-Dec. 2021 was massive:

• 6.2 million unprocessed individual returns (Form 1040);
• 2.8 million unprocessed business returns (Form 941);