IRS: So What, We Cannot Lose Them as Customers

Despite a backlog of millions of pieces of unopened mail--some containing checks from taxpayers---the IRS is sending out late payment notices.

Rep. Neal (Accounting Today)

Many taxpayers have been receiving balance-due notices from the IRS even though they sent in their tax payments to the IRS months ago, because trailers full of mail have remained unopened since the start of the pandemic....

“IRS officials reported that, due to office closures, the IRS has accumulated a staggering backlog of unopened mail,” [Rep. Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts] wrote in a letter Wednesday to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig. “At one point this summer, the IRS had approximately 12 million pieces of unopened correspondence in its inventory. Despite this unprocessed mail, the IRS reportedly has been sending notices to taxpayers whose correspondence and payments remain unopened. Therefore, many of the taxpayers receiving these notices already have made the payments that the IRS seeks.”

...Neal would like the IRS to stop sending out the notices when there is still so much uncertainty about what taxes have been paid by check and are sitting in unopened envelopes.

The IRS acknowledged it has received
Mom's return 5 months after it was
mailed but has yet to send the refund.

Somehow businesses that have managed to stay alive have coped with the unprecedented stress of the COVID-19 lockdown.

A broad swath of Government agencies--e.g., the CDC, the State Department, public education, and the IRS--have demonstrated gross inefficiency, if not incompetence.

Taxpayers should be given the benefit of the doubt that the mistakes lie with the IRS, not them.

It also doesn't bode well for the November elections, when enormous burdens will be placed on the U.S. Postal Service.