Taxpayers await IRS response
Pandemic creates delays, backlog
It’s mid-year already. Do you know what happened to your income tax refund or your return?
Plenty of people like Charles and Anna Letner are still waiting to learn the fate of their 2019 federal return and expected refund.
The retired Phoenix couple said they have always completed their returns on paper and mailed them in, rather than preparing and submitting returns online. There’s nothing wrong with that, though the Internal Revenue Service for years has extolled the virtues of online filing, claiming it’s both faster and more secure. That certainly has been the case during the coronavirus pandemic, which shut down large swaths of the economy – and much of the IRS.
The Letners mailed their paper return in late February, well in advance of this year’s original April 17 filing deadline, yet still have no answers.
The couple said they checked the “where’s my refund” tool at irs.gov on several occasions but didn’t learn anything.
“Each time the automatic response is ‘There is no information about your refund,’ and after the double check for accuracy of information, it automatically hangs up,” they said in an email.
They also tried calling the IRS but haven’t been able to connect with a live person. Similarly, two letters mailed to the agency have gone unanswered.
“We do understand that the virus has caused great delays,” the Letners said. But they’re concerned that their return might have gotten lost in the mail or misplaced. They hope to receive an answer prior to this year’s extended July 15 filing deadline.
“We certainly don’t want to pay a late fee,” they said.
As the Letners surmised, IRS staff is well behind in processing outstanding tax returns from 2019, especially paper ones.
“The disruption caused by COVID-19 and the postponed due date had – and continues to have – an enormous impact on the 2020 filing season, reflected in the number of returns received, the volume of correspondence received from taxpayers and toll-free telephone service,” said the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an IRS watchdog group, in a late June report to Congress.
IRS operations curtailed
The service disruptions, which date to around March 20, have come in several forms:
• Widespread IRS office closures, with reduced staff to answer calls or meet taxpayers in person.
• A large and growing backlog of incoming mail. The Taxpayer Advocate Service estimated 4.7 million paper returns hadn’t been processed as of May 16, and more will arrive ahead of the new July 15 deadline.
• Shutting down of the National Distribution Center, which deprived many taxpayers of pre-printed forms.
• Mistaken refund delays over fraud or identity theft concerns. The IRS normally requires taxpayers to provide additional documentation when it spots a potential problem. But due to office closures, the IRS has been slow to process such responses and release legitimate refunds.
• Closing of many of the schools, community centers and other outlets where lower-income taxpayers could receive free filing help through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for Elderly programs.
As of April 17, the IRS had processed 24 million fewer returns than it had last year, the Taxpayer Advocate Service said, though some of that reduced flow reflects the three additional months to file this time around.
The IRS on June 30 updated the status of its operations, noting services including “live assistance on telephones, processing paper tax returns and responding to correspondence continue to be extremely limited.”