by The Center Square Staff at Just the News
The last weekend for Americans to file their taxes before the Monday deadline is here, but the Internal Revenue Service still faces major backlogs for individual and business filings.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig testified before Congress last month, promising to clear through the 20 million unprocessed 2021 tax returns by the end of 2022. He cited an array of reasons for the backlog, including “new responsibilities,” delays in modernization and uncertainty about funding that slows down hiring.
“When we are confronted with long-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs), we typically freeze nearly all external hiring,” he said. “We take this action to ensure we have funds to pay all employees, including any applicable pay raises. Last fall, we increased staffing in our Wage & Investment Division (W&I) despite the CR, hiring at risk without the funding in place to support these positions, but assuming future resources would be provided by the eventual enactment of the FY2022 appropriation, to help address our inventory.”
Observers say President Joe Biden’s trillions of dollars in social spending passed through Congress overwhelmed the IRS last year. The agency was tasked with distributing and tracking much of the money, such as the stimulus payments and the monthly child tax credit to qualifying families.
“The problems the IRS is having primarily stems from Congress putting the responsibilities for distributing pandemic-era social programs on an agency that’s supposed to exist for revenue collection, not benefit administration,” said Alex Muresianu, a tax expert at the Tax Foundation. “The effects of that disconnect only got worse during the pandemic: The various relief measures (CARES, the appropriations law in early 2020, ARP) increased the IRS’ administrative responsibilities enormously, making them responsible for distributing hundreds of billions of additional dollars.
“And while they did receive a budget increase to try and make that process smoother, it’s tough to upgrade their capacity that quickly.”
Rettig’s testimony seemed to back up this idea…
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