IRS SLOWLY AND STEADILY RETURNING TO NORMALCY
On May 19th, 2020, the IRS issued instructions to require thousands of employees in Kentucky, Texas, and Utah to return to their worksites beginning June 1. The Commissioner took this step recognizing the expanding backlog of work that the agency needed to take care of, such such as opening mail, processing paper tax returns, and taking phone calls. This which will continue to focus on employees with jobs that can’t be performed from home. Rumors were floating that any and all mails being sent to the Internal Revenue Service were being returned to the senders, so that the important documents were not lost. To the point even as today, June 2, 2020, there are some areas of the Service where the fax machines are unpluged (efaxes) are not going through. Cited reasons are security.
As of today, some areas of the Collections divisions, the phone calls are being answered. The Practitioners Priority Hotline are being manned and answered, however, the wait time, is excessive, at times in excess of an hour.
The mandatory recall, is to process a total of 10 million pieces of unopened mail, as of May 16th, 2020 says the House Ways and Means Commitee. Former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, has recommended that the Service should prioritize current filing season work that got put on the back burner due to the 'shut down', and process cases involving taxpayers claiming the earned income tax credit, where the refunds may have been held up as flagged by the refund fraud detection filters in place. Unfortunately, these filters are so sensitive that quite a lot of legitimate returns processing also gets slowed.
The IRS should prioritize filing season work that’s been put on pause because of the pandemic, said former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson. This includes cases, such as those involving taxpayers claiming the earned income tax credit, where refunds are held up because a return has been flagged by the agency’s refund fraud detection filters, she said. The IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service has previously found that more than half the time, these filters stop legitimate returns. These returns, can mean thousands of dollars for families who are in need to due the economic conditions prevailing these days.