Source IR-2022-11
National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M Collins presented her annual report to Congress on January 12, 2022. This report highlighted 2021 as “the most challenging year taxpayers and tax professionals have ever experienced.” She highlighted the following executive summary items as well as reflecting that likely the 2022 season will see more of the same:
- Backlog: As of late December 2021, the IRS backlog was 6million unprocessed original individual returns; 2.3 million unprocessed amended individual returns; 2 million unprocessed employer’s quarterly tax returns and 5 million pieces of taxpayer correspondence (responding to IRS notices).
- Online “Where’s My Refund?” tool: Often was unable to answer that question… it had no data due to the backlogs.
- Telephone service: 282 million phone calls received and IRS answered only 32 million = 11%.
- IRS processing averages: The IRS received 6.2 million taxpayer responses to proposed adjustments and took an average of 199 days to process them (up from 74 days in 2019).
- The IRS is unable to find new employees to hire to meet the gap when existing employees retire or leave government service.
Our opinion: Starting 2022 with such a backlog will lead to similar issues this year and some refunds (especially amended returns) may take six to eight months to process.
