Taxable Talk

Earlier today, the IRS announced extremely broad penalty relief for 2019 and 2020 late-filed tax returns.  Here’s the beginning of the IRS’s press release:

To help struggling taxpayers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internal Revenue Service today issued Notice 2022-36, which provides penalty relief to most people and businesses who file certain 2019 or 2020 returns late.

The IRS is also taking an additional step to help those who paid these penalties already. Nearly 1.6 million taxpayers will automatically receive more than $1.2 billion in refunds or credits. Many of these payments will be completed by the end of September.

Besides providing relief to both individuals and businesses impacted by the pandemic, this step is designed to allow the IRS to focus its resources on processing backlogged tax returns and taxpayer correspondence to help return to normal operations for the 2023 filing season.

“Throughout the pandemic, the IRS has worked hard to support the nation and provide relief to people in many different ways,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “The penalty relief issued today is yet another way the agency is supporting people during this unprecedented time. This penalty relief will be automatic for people or businesses who qualify; there’s no need to call.”

The relief applies to the failure to file penalty. The penalty is typically assessed at a rate of 5% per month and up to 25% of the unpaid tax when a federal income tax return is filed late. This relief applies to forms in both the Form 1040 and 1120 series, as well as others listed in Notice 2022-36, posted today on IRS.gov.

The returns impacted by this include:

• Form 1040 (Individual Income Tax Returns)
• Form 1041 (Trust/Estate Tax Returns)
• Form 1120 (C-Corporation Tax Returns)
• Form 1120-S (S-Corporation Tax Returns)
• Form 1065 (Partnership Tax Returns)
• Some foreign information returns, such as Forms 5471 and 3520

Let’s say you haven’t filed your 2020 tax return.  You’re being given a golden opportunity to avoid a 25% penalty.  You will still owe the late payment penalty (0.5% of the tax due per month late) and interest, but these pale in comparison to the late filing penalty.  If I were an impacted taxpayer, I would immediately contact a tax professional to get the return filed!  Most tax professionals are extremely busy (especially with the extension deadlines approaching), but things will only be worse in two weeks.

If you did file one of these returns and late and were assessed a penalty, you should receive your refund by the end of September.

Yesterday, a client of mine called asking about her 2020 tax refund.  I assumed she was one of the unlucky individuals whose return fell out of IRS processing and is stuck waiting to be reviewed.  However, she told me that her return didn’t even show in the IRS’s “Where’s My Refund.”   I confirmed that–and that didn’t make any sense; her return was filed on September 30th and accepted that day.

I called the IRS and discovered another reason some haven’t received their refunds.  If you made an extension payment on exactly May 17, 2021 (the last day to file a 2020 extension) and are receiving a refund, your return may have been “frozen” by the IRS computer system.  (I had my second such case today.)  I don’t know how extensive this issue is, but the representative I spoke to yesterday told me that he had dealt with “many” such cases.

Hopefully, someone at the IRS is going through frozen returns to manually unfreeze the returns without taxpayers having to call the IRS.  But if you made an extension payment on May 17, 2021 and have filed your return and have not received your refund, check IRS’s “Where’s My Refund.”  If no status at all is shown (the return does not show as still being processed), you or your representative needs to call the IRS and have the return “unfrozen.”

As I write this, it’s September 29th. Two weeks from Friday is October 15, 2021. That’s the deadline for individual taxpayers on extension to file their tax returns (except for those in disaster areas such as the hurricane that impacted New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Mississippi). If you have yet to send your paperwork to your tax professional it’s past the time to do so. Yes, it’s time to panic!

If your return is simple and straightforward, stop procrastinating and get it done and filed. If your return has any sort of complexities, you must start working on it now. Your tax professional needs time to get it done correctly. You need to turn in that paperwork post haste. If you’ve procrastinated, stop, sit down, and get it done–NOW.

It may already be too late for your return to be timely filed with many tax professionals. For example, our official deadline was September 15th. We’re not horribly behind, but I can state that if one of our clients procrastinates beyond this weekend there could be issues.  And I can guarantee if you drop off your paperwork with us on October 13th your return is almost certainly not going to be timely filed.

If you file late, it’s as if you never filed your extension. So sit down and get everything done now! Of course, if you like paying a 25% penalty, continue procrastinating.  After all, tax professionals are far less busy after October 15th.

The IRS maintains a webpage showing operational status during the pandemic.  Additionally, the IRS periodically sends out “Hot Issue” summaries.  One of the items asked in the “Hot Issue” questions was on amended returns:

1040X not processed

Issue:  When will 1040X be processed?

Response: As a result of the backlog in the number of amended returns in inventory created by Coronavirus closures, the processing time has been extended to 20 weeks. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

That’s equivalent to about five months.  Unfortunately, that’s very optimistic.  I have seen an amended return processed that fast this year (back in March), but the return involved no change in dollar amounts (just changing the capital loss carryforward for a year).  The last three amended returns I prepared for clients took nine months, 15 months, and 12 months to be processed.

Now, I am not blaming the IRS here for the delays.  As long as most government employees aren’t working in their offices, these delays will continue.  However, I do blame the IRS for misstating what taxpayers should expect from the IRS.  Bluntly, taxpayers should expect that it will take on average one year from the date they file their amended return for it to be processed.  I’m not going to quote five months when that simply isn’t happening.

I’ve been talking over the past months about the issues faced by taxpayers in dealing with the IRS.  Suffice to say, when you have a 3% chance of reaching a human things aren’t going well.  But we should always look at the good side of things: I’m still breathing (in reality and in view of the IRS).

One woman in New Jersey is classified as “deceased” according to this report in the New York Post.  It’s going on seven years of bureaucratic futility in rising like a Phoenix to life.  Of course, she is really breathing and this is something that should just have gotten fixed immediately.  And yes, she still must pay taxes even though she’s “deceased.”

Indeed, I was able to give a client good news this week.  He was erroneously assessed a late filing penalty on a foreign trust return (the return was timely filed with an extension, and we had proof of both the timely filing and the extension).  Late filed foreign trust returns (Form 3520) are assessed a $10,000 penalty.  When the client was assessed the penalty he wrote the IRS with proof.  When the IRS ignored him, he asked me to write the IRS.  I did so, but the IRS refused to reverse the ruling.  We appealed, and after eighteen months of waiting we received a letter reversing the penalty.  (We never had an Appeals hearing–it appears that the Appeals screener realized that my client did have an extension.)

The overall theme when dealing with the IRS remains the same: patience.  You need it when dealing with the IRS.  I do expect things to slowly improve once the IRS moves employees back to the Service Centers (probably this Fall), but given the humongous backlog it will takes years for the IRS to be back to normal.

Yesterday, a fellow tax professional posted on Twitter:

Ogden currently has 70 tractor trailers of unopened mail. – per IRS agent trying to explain why a POA from 2019 still hasn’t cleared yet.

Yet if you read the IRS Operations page on the current status of IRS operations you get a different picture:

[On Individual Tax Returns] The IRS is opening mail within normal timeframes and all returns received prior to 2021 have been processed if the return had no errors or did not require further review. As of June 25, 2021, we had 16.7 million unprocessed individual returns in the pipeline…

Status of Processing Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return: The IRS is now opening mail within normal timeframes. The IRS has also made significant progress in processing Forms 941. As of July 2, 2021, we had about 5,000 Forms 941 received prior to 2021 in the processing pipeline. Including current year returns, as of July 2, 2021, we had 1.6 million unprocessed 941s in the pipeline.

An individual tractor trailer has a volume of 3,489 cubic feet; 70 of these would have a volume of 244,230 cubic feet.  You could fit 1,826,967 gallons of fluid in 70 tractor trailers.  That’s a lot of mail.  Sure, Ogden does now receive all paper-filed individual returns for the western United States, but what the IRS is saying doesn’t make sense if the IRS is telling us the truth.

Ogden is where almost all specialty returns are filed (Forms 3520, 3520-A, 8804/8805/8813, etc.), and those are not mentioned in the IRS pronouncement.  Yes, that will add to the unprocessed paper (these returns must all be paper-filed), but in volume it’s not large.  Paper-filed business returns (corporations, S-Corporations, and partnerships) also mainly go to Ogden; however, most such returns are electronically filed so in volume this is likely not a big factor.

My suspicion is that a large amount of the 70 trailers are filled with returns waiting to be sent to federal warehouses.  Because of Covid, most federal employees are working from home.  Paper-filed returns are generally stored for years in federal warehouses.  The IRS cannot send those returns from Ogden to various warehouses because the warehouses are closed.  Thus, they fill tractor trailers waiting for them to reopen.  These do not represent unprocessed paperwork; they are filled with processed paperwork that must be stored.  My guess is that the telephone representative the tax professional spoke with saw the trailers, knew that some are filled with unprocessed mail, and assumed the rest were too.  I’m reaching out to my IRS Stakeholder Liaison on this issue.

Still, if you’re dealing with the IRS patience is a necessity.  We’re telling clients the following timelines (these are averages) when dealing with the IRS:

• Refunds Where You Claim the Recovery Rebate Payment (as a tax credit): 4 months
• Processing Time for Paper-Filed Return: 10 months
• Processing Time for Paper-Filed Amended Return: 12 months
• Processing Time for Electronically Filed Amended Return: 11 months
• Response Time on Correspondence to AUR Group (CP2000s, etc.): 6 months
• Response Time on Other Correspondence to the IRS: 12 months

Those timelines are, bluntly, ridiculous.  But that’s what’s going on today.  Though I expect the IRS to return to full staffing at Service Centers this Fall, it will likely take the IRS years to get out from under the backlog.

This morning, The National Taxpayer Advocate issued her semi-annual report to Congress.  In the report is the true state of tax returns at the IRS.  Fair warning, it’s not a pretty picture.

As of the close of the filing season (late May), there were 35.3 million tax returns that were unprocessed.  This includes:

• 1.1 million paper returns received in 2020 (100,000 for individuals and 1 million for businesses);
• 15.7 million paper returns received in 2021 (6 million for individuals, 4.6 million for businesses, and 5.1 million “unspecified”);
• 10.3 million returns awaiting “Error Resolution” (9.8 million for individuals, 500,000 for businesses);
• 1.4 million returns that are “Processing Rejects” (1.2 million for individuals, 200,000 for businesses);
• 2 million returns that are “Unpostable” (1.1 million for individuals, 900,000 for businesses); and
• 2.1 million ID Theft returns (all individuals).

And if you called the IRS general phone line for individuals, you had a 3% chance of getting through!  (This is actually better than the Taxpayer Advocate’s initial estimate of 2%, not that there’s a significant difference here).  Tax professionals have special phone numbers to call.  I found that I had about a 5% chance of getting through–or a 95% chance of not getting through.  And I pity those who had to go through Identity Verification.  The IRS increased the number of returns subject to this while phone staffing on these lines decreased.  The Taxpayer Advocate called it a “Historically low level of IRS telephone service.” I won’t argue.

While I expect things to improve, it’s likely going to take years for the IRS to work through the backlog.  I currently quote to my clients the following timelines:

• Processing time for a paper return: 10 months
• Processing time for an amended return: 12 months
• Processing time for your refund if you do not get it in the first month after e-filing: 5 months

The above numbers are averages.  I had a client (who I helped come into compliance) file back returns last year.  One return took 16 months to be processed.   That return was incorrectly processed by the IRS, so a letter must be sent (so the client is likely looking at another few months before it’s correctly processed).

The IRS is doing better on correspondence (the average response time is 6 months), but it’s nothing to write home about.  An issue not mentioned in the report is the IRS issuing Notices of Deficiency prior to reading correspondence addressing underlying issues (thus, the notices should not have been issued).  I know that the Taxpayer Advocate is working on this systemic issue, but a resolution is, unfortunately, unlikely in the near future.

I do expect the IRS Service Centers to be restaffed this Fall, and this will then start to help on reducing the backlog.  Unfortunately, a backlog that was built over 18 months will take at least that long to be undone.

This past week I fielded a number of phone calls asking this question.  Unfortunately, the answer is no.  Neither I nor any other tax professional can speed up your IRS refund.

First, the good news: about 90% of IRS refunds are moving through the system normally (with the refund being issued between 10 and 21 days after filing).  However, the remaining 10% of returns with refunds are facing long delays; I estimate that these refunds will be delayed on average between three and five months.  Why?

There are two issues causing the delays.  First, the IRS is manually checking all refunds where an individual is claiming a refund for not receiving the Recovery Rebate Payment(s) (Form 1040, Line 30).  Due to staffing issues at IRS Service Centers, this takes quite some time.

The other issue is “errors” when processing.  This doesn’t mean there’s an error on your return.  Rather, as part of normal processing a few returns “fall out of processing.”  In most years, the “errors” are fixed within one to four days, and the delay is hardly noticed.  But 2021 isn’t a normal year.  Because of Covid, IRS Service Centers are not fully staffed.  Returns that fall out of processing go in a giant (virtual) stack to await a human to review the error, fix it, and have the return complete being processed.  Instead of taking days, we’re talking months.

Your tax professional cannot fix this.  There is no one to call to have this resolved.  Indeed, the IRS asks that you do not call them as there really is nothing that can be done.  Please don’t call your tax professional either; he or she cannot make your refund come to you any faster this year.  You must just be patient.

The only good news is that we expect to see many IRS employees return to Service Centers in the coming weeks.  That should eventually help to resolve the problem.  Until then, you should just periodically check the IRS’s “Where’s My Refund” website.  And do realize that you will receive interest from the IRS on your delayed refund (though that interest is taxable).