IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig quelled the concerns of some tax professionals May 15 when he rejected the idea of extending the individual tax return filing and payment deadlines by another three months.
“Currently, July 15 is the date,” Rettig said at the National Tax Association’s online spring symposium, noting that taxpayers can still request an automatic filing extension to October 15. Rettig was responding in part to tax professionals’ worries about their and the IRS’s ability to cope with moving the individual tax return filing deadline again, to October 15.
Despite the agency closing 93 percent of its physical facilities because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with 54,000 employees teleworking, the IRS still processed 115 million individual tax returns, resulting in 94.3 million refunds worth $255 billion through May 8, Rettig said.
The IRS also disbursed the first tranche of $147 billion in coronavirus economic impact payments April 10, about 14 days after they were authorized by Congress in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act (P.L. 116-136), Rettig noted. The IRS’s total stimulus distribution now exceeds $220 billion to more than 130 million individuals, he said.
Still, the commissioner acknowledged that the IRS’s service performance levels haven’t met some taxpayers’ and tax professionals’ expectations.
“We get it,” Rettig said, “that we’re not providing the service during this COVID situation that I think that every American is entitled to and that we would like to provide.
“But neither is the private sector, or the public sector, or other federal agencies,” Rettig said. “It’s not lost on us that we need to do more, and we’re trying to do all we can.”
‘Temporary Situation’
Rettig said the IRS is taking a phased approach to reopening call centers, paper processing operations, and other functions, but may move some functions from closed facilities to open offices in other states.
“We are not shut down,” Rettig emphasized in response to what he called a “good lot of articles” claiming the contrary. “We’re continuing to hire in certain capacities,” he added, without providing details.
As recently as February the IRS's Small Business/Self-Employed Division expected to increase its staff 50 percent, with up to 2,700 phone assisters in 19 locations across the country, while 40 new exempt organization revenue agents had been hired, compared with 50 in all of fiscal 2019. Rettig has also punctuated his public addresses with pleas for tax professionals to apply for work at his agency.
The IRS commissioner said the agency’s People First Initiative suspended some operations with a view to taxpayer relief. The initiative, announced March 25, suspended most installment agreement payments; activity on liens, levies, and most seizures; new field, office, and correspondence examinations; and new tax-delinquent certifications to the State Department for potential passport revocation.
The IRS also expanded electronic outreach to taxpayers and communications with practitioners in an effort to reduce in-person meetings, Rettig said. At the same time, the new electronic portals “raise a lot of excitement among people who might not do the right things,” he noted.
However, the commissioner also hinted that some coronavirus emergency measures may not last.
“We’re at a place that I’m not sure we would have been at otherwise, in terms of accepting electronic signatures and email correspondence and whatnot, with respect to examinations and certain other situations,” Rettig said.
“It’s a temporary situation for us, but it’s something that we’re looking at and will continue to look at quite a bit moving forward,” Rettig added.
No Payment Left Behind
The IRS has postponed to the end of 2020 a report due to Congress in September on implementation of the Taxpayer First Act (P.L. 116-25), Rettig said.
Some IRS employees at the agency’s Taxpayer First Act Office were detailed to other assignments because of the coronavirus emergency, slowing progress on the report, Rettig noted.
Meanwhile, IRS leadership has been working 12-hour days, seven days a week since March on implementation of the CARES Act, the commissioner said.
The IRS decided to issue the first economic impact payments via direct deposit to taxpayers with the lowest adjusted gross income, and then proceed upward through the income scale, Rettig said.
The agency’s Get My Payment portal, encouraging taxpayers to enter or update their banking information to get their money faster, has updated payment data for 14 million taxpayers since April 10, Rettig noted.
The commissioner also boasted that the IRS has “touched” more than 100,000 individuals and community organizations, including the media and Congress, to get out the word about the coronavirus payments.
Rettig noted that the 2008 economic stimulus program left an estimated 10.4 million individuals without payments.
“We don’t want to leave any eligible person behind,” the IRS commissioner said. “We want to collectively at the end of 2020 realize that we tried to do everything possible to reach people, to get these payments out to them.”