- The IRS said it's putting an "aggressive" plan in place to get millions of Americans tax refunds.
- Right now, the understaffed and underfunded agency is sitting on millions of unprocessed returns.
- But the plans to ramp up hiring and create surge teams are temporary solutions to systemic problems.
If you're still waiting for a tax refund, or have languished for hours waiting for someone at the IRS to pick up the phone, you're not alone — and the IRS knows that.
The embattled agency just announced that it's implementing an "aggressive plan" to finally bring down its historic backlog of returns. New measures include aiming to hire 10,000 new employees, putting together a "surge team" to tackle incoming new returns and amended returns, and streamlined systems for communicating directly with taxpayers.
As of mid-December, the IRS was sitting on 6 million unprocessed returns, according to national taxpayer advocate Erin Collins.
The pandemic amounted to a perfect storm for the already understaffed and underfunded IRS, which not only had to adjust to new working conditions, but was also saddled with distributing stimulus checks and the monthly child tax credit.
It's also working on technology that goes back to the 1960's, and things like a lack of staples and carts for moving files around are reportedly taking up workers' time, according to the New York Times.
In the meantime, millions of taxpayers are still waiting on their tax refunds from years past — and it's exacting a financial and emotional toll.
Andrea Grant, a 38-year-old in Wyoming, told Insider in February that she was waiting on $9,000 from an amended return filed last May. The unprocessed return meant that she did not receive monthly child tax credit payments for her daughter and granddaughter.
She said she was "scrambling to try to stay afloat" and to get together enough money to keep her house. Like other Americans waiting on thousands in tax refunds, Grant has repeatedly tried to get in touch with the IRS — and, at one point, waited for six hours to get someone on the phone.
Part of the IRS's new plan includes expanding the option for taxpayers to get a callback instead of waiting on hold, which the IRS says has saved filers nearly one million hours of wait time just this fiscal year.
Congress is taking some modest steps to cut the agency's strain. The House on Wednesday evening approved a large government funding bill that included an extra $12.6 billion for the IRS among many other spending programs.
That funding would be devoted to help the agency sort through a massive backlog of paper returns and modernize some of its systems and online portals. Democrats said it was the largest infusion of federal funding in two decades.
The spending package is poised to be approved in the Senate and reach President Joe Biden's desk within a few days.
As part of their stalled social and climate package, Democrats sought to pour over $80 billion into the IRS to beef up its ability to pursue the wealthy tax evaders. That may be revived in a slimmer bill later this year.
"Ultimately, these approaches are short-term salves for 2022's tax season but don't address the much deeper structural problem at the IRS," the IRS and Treasury Department said in a release about the plan. "Had Congress funded the IRS adequately for the past decade, it would have entered the pandemic with the resources it needed – and would not have millions of tax returns waiting to be processed."
Are you an IRS worker who has a story to share about the backlog? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected]