The Internal Revenue Service ended the tax-filing season with 35.3 million unprocessed tax returns, more than four times what it had during the last pre-pandemic filing season in 2019, according to a new report.
Tasks that require human hands at the tax agency account for the biggest part of that backlog. The delays are affecting amended tax returns, paper returns and identity-theft cases, according to Wednesday’s report from the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent ombudsman office inside the IRS. Also affected are tax returns claiming stimulus payments where the return doesn’t match information the IRS has on file.
Delays in processing can stall tax refunds and frustrate taxpayers waiting for an answer from the IRS.
“We can understand and articulate the challenges the IRS faced over the past year, but for individuals and businesses that waited nine months, 12 months, or longer to receive their refunds, the reality of the long delays was incomprehensible and in many cases, financially distressing,” said the report, which included data through June 23, a period that included the May 17 filing-season deadline for most taxpayers and the June 15 deadline for some affected by disasters.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has said that employees are working as quickly as possible using mandatory overtime to process the returns. He told the Senate Finance Committee on June 8 that the IRS had processed returns received in 2020 and was effectively caught up on backlogged opening of mail.
