Following the 16-day government closure earlier this month, the IRS has reopened to face a huge backlog of work which will affect the start of the tax season next year.
Although setting up IRS core systems occurs year-round, the autumn months of each year mark the busiest season of preparation for of over 50 IRS systems. During the shutdown, the IRS fell nearly three weeks behind its tight timetable for being ready to start the 2014 filing season, due to the loss of about 90 percent of IRS operations which had to be put on hold. In addition to the normal system updates, there are added training, programming and testing demands on IRS systems this year in order to provide additional refund fraud and identity theft detection and prevention.
If the IRS is going to be prepared to handle the expected 150 million tax returns in 2014, they will need more time to catch up in updating these systems. A one or two week delay is anticipated for the 2014 filing season. The IRS is currently exploring options to shorten this postponement and will announce a final decision on the start of the 2014 filing season in December, according to Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.
“Readying our systems to handle the tax season is an intricate, detailed process, and we must take the time to get it right,” Werfel said. “The adjustment to the start of the filing season provides us the necessary time to program, test and validate our systems so that we can provide a smooth filing and refund process for the nation’s taxpayers. We want the public and tax professionals to know about the delay well in advance so they can prepare for a later start of the filing season.”
During the closure, the IRS received 400,000 pieces of correspondence, on top of the 1 million items already being processed before the shutdown. Added to the written correspondence, the IRS is also taking a heavy load on phone lines, walk-in sites and other services from taxpayers and tax practitioners. Due to this ‘traffic jam’ of correspondence, the IRS is encouraging taxpayers to wait before calling or visiting (if their issue is not urgent), and to continue to use automated applications on IRS.gov whenever possible.
“In the days ahead, we will continue assessing the impact of the shutdown on IRS operations, and we will do everything we can to work through the backlog and pent-up demand,” Werfel said. “We greatly appreciate the patience of taxpayers and the tax professional community during this period.”
Stay tuned this coming December for the IRS’s final decision on the delay.
