Many taxpayers are still waiting on their 2020 tax returns as the 2022 tax season heats up.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) are leading a bicameral effort urging the IRS to do what it needs to do to reduce its massive backlog, improve customer service, and reduce disruptions for taxpayers during the 2022 tax filing season.
In a joint letter sent to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig, Spanberger and Menendez led 45 of their colleagues in highlighting Americans’ challenges in their day-to-day interactions with the IRS.
In the letter, the lawmakers called for the IRS to consider pursuing maximum overtime options for its staff, expanding its surge teams to address processing and correspondence delays, and seeking fast ways to train additional employees and volunteers.
“As the IRS works to eliminate the current backlog of returns and correspondence, we request you to pursue additional actions to maximize the IRS’ current workforce to address the backlog in order to reduce disruptions this filing season,” said Spanberger, Menendez, and their colleagues.
“We continue to hear from constituents who are still waiting for their 2020 tax returns, have received confusing notices about overdue payments they already paid, and cannot reach anyone at the IRS for assistance. Many of these problems stem from the millions of unprocessed correspondence items from 2021. We understand the long-term solution to ensure the IRS can manage its workload and provide timely and high-quality service to taxpayers is additional resources to hire and train employees across several departments and modernize technologies. However, those investments will take time, and taxpayers require more immediate relief, especially with the 2022 filing season already underway.”
The Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and the National Treasury Employees Union both supported the letter.
“As Sen. Menendez, Congresswoman Spanberger, and their colleagues accurately describe in their letter, IRS’ current backlog is a persistent problem that must be addressed by the agency — and vice president of taxation, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. “Allowing maximum overtime options for IRS employees working on the processing backlog and identifying additional employees who can volunteer to be quickly re-trained to work on surge teams is a common-sense solution to increasing IRS man-hours spent on the backlog.”
“Sen. Menendez, Rep. Spanberger and their colleagues have identified several practical, immediate steps the IRS can take to alleviate the agency’s backlog and improve service to American taxpayers,” said Tony Reardon, national president, National Treasury Employees Union. “NTEU supports their recommendation that the agency use volunteers from the current IRS workforce, plus additional overtime pay, for temporary reassignments to divisions that need the extra assistance. As Sen. Menendez and Rep. Spanberger note, these changes must be followed by additional long-term investments in order to rebuild the agency after 10 years of budget cuts.”
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