LaHood requests IRS fix existing backlog

As the 2022 tax filing season gets underway, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) joined a bipartisan contingent of nearly 200 lawmakers seeking to have the Biden administration address the more than 16 million tax returns that still haven’t been processed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from previous seasons.

“The ongoing IRS return processing backlog and related customer service failures have reached crisis levels as the new filing season begins,” Rep. LaHood said in a Jan. 27 statement. “The backlog, with some folks still waiting on returns from the 2020 filing season, is causing unnecessary burdens for families and small businesses in Illinois.” 

Rep. LaHood and his colleagues sent a Jan. 26 letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting information on how she and the IRS “intend to address these failures,” said the congressman.

“Recognizing the extraordinary challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the IRS operating with antiquated technology and a constrained budget, we find the current situation alarming,” the members wrote. “We stand ready to support the IRS and look forward to hearing how we can help you address any obstacles facing the agency.”

In their letter, the lawmakers made several recommendations for the IRS, including to delay collection of penalties from people waiting for the agency to process active and pending penalty abatement requests, and to streamline the process for taxpayers affected by the pandemic to show reasonable cause for penalty abatement, without the need for written correspondence.

They also suggested that the IRS lift penalties for taxpayers who paid at least 70 percent of the taxes they owed during each of the past two years, speed up the processing of amended returns, and more quickly answer inquiries from congressional caseworkers and the Taxpayer Advocate Service, according to their letter.

“While we recognize no single action will alleviate issues that have resulted from difficulties at the IRS spanning administrations of both political parties, these steps would provide our constituents with greater certainty as we enter this year’s filing season,” wrote Rep. LaHood and his colleagues.