Newhouse, 98 colleagues question preparedness of challenged IRS

With the current backlog of unprocessed tax returns piling up and the upcoming 2022 tax filing season looming, U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and 98 of his colleagues want to know how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is getting prepared to handle its challenges.

“In central Washington alone, I have received numerous calls from concerned constituents who are unable to communicate with the IRS on their own, and receive threatening, misleading letters from the agency even after their cases were supposedly resolved,” Rep. Newhouse said. “This is no way to run an organization, and I urge the IRS to address this backlog and put in place measures to ensure they are prepared for the coming tax filing season.”

In a Dec. 9 letter sent to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Rep. Newhouse and his colleagues requested information on how the agency plans to process the backlog of unprocessed returns from the current 2021 and 2020 filing seasons. 

“This massive backlog is causing significant and unnecessary burdens for families and small businesses who can’t get answers from the IRS about why their returns have not been processed,” the lawmakers wrote. “The IRS is in danger of falling into a vicious backlog cycle that will harm millions of taxpayers.”

The members cited recent data provided to Congress by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) showing that there are currently more than 9.6 million unprocessed paper returns that were received in calendar year 2021. An additional five million paper and e-file returns have been suspended during processing, according to TIGTA, they wrote. 

“Some portion of those five million returns is from the 2020 filing season, though we understand that TIGTA is unable to categorize returns in suspension by tax year,” wrote the lawmakers.

The congressmen noted that they appreciated this month’s launch of the IRS’s “Get Ready for Taxes” campaign for the 2022 tax season, but said they “have serious doubts about the IRS’s own preparedness for the new season.”

Toward that end, they requested that Rettig provide Congress with information by Dec. 17 regarding the steps the IRS is taking to ensure it can handle the backlog and the upcoming tax filing season.

“The agency must take urgent action now to alleviate the backlog and be ready for the start of the 2022 filing season,” wrote Rep. Newhouse and the members.