Rep. Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, who performs a significant role in tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, has recently urged the internal revenue service to stop sending notices on unpaid taxes to the taxpayers.
However, this was happening at the agency because of the Mail Backlog that turned out as the consequence of the global pandemic, COVID-19.
Owing to this problem, many taxpayers were still receiving ‘balance-due notices’ that perhaps have created a tense situation for most people among you.
The officers have stated the reason behind it. After the global pandemic, most of the mails have remained unopened, even taxpayers filled their online tax return to the IRS a month ago, but still, it was happening. Similarly, after the employees returned to work, the entire process began to deal with all these unopened emails. But, this wasn’t the instant solution as the number of mails was in millions.
Therefore, to manage the situation, the IRS decided not to address the payment’s final processed date and only post the receiving date payment. And taxpayers also don’t require to cancel their checks sent to IRS, as they’ll slowly review the mail to ensure taxpayers don’t get any penalties or interest.
But Neal suggested the IRS that in addition to sending lots of notice, IRS can set up an online portal for taxpayers to understand their tax return smoothly.
In the context of this suggestion, Neal says that taxpayers can quickly provide information to the IRS about their previous mails. However, Neal also requested IRS to assure taxpayers that no penalties or charge has knocked their doors, as because of the pandemic, the agency was delaying in processing their payments.
According to IRS official reports- already IRS has piled up a massive backlog of unopened mails.
Therefore on Wednesday, Neal wrote a letter to the commissioner of the IRS (Charles Rettig) and defined all the problems that taxpayers are facing right now. Neal urged the IRS to stop sending out the entire notices that are introducing lots of unnecessary stress on taxpayers.
Because of these emails, taxpayers are daily contacting their tax return agent as this problem is coming at that time when only a limited staff is coming for duty, and no telephone assistance is available to answer them.
Neal also wrote ” to not to make backlog problem a taxpayer problem” indeed, IRS should carefully review each mail and ensure everything before sending, so that a taxpayer doesn’t get penalized unnecessarily. Otherwise, the IRS should leave sending the notices to the taxpayers.
Therefore, last week, the IRS updated its web page with new information that is clearing the taxpayers’ entire doubts. But due to COVID-19, most of the mails may still be unopened. Thus, to avoid penalties while filing the individual tax return, taxpayers must remember that they don’t cancel their checks as IRS will continue to process them to ensure that the fund is available or check isn’t bounced.
Currently, the IRS provides relief from bad checks to provide equitable and fair treatment to the taxpayers. But in most instances, interest and charges may still apply.