[November Update] With additional funding in place now, the IRS has now hired nearly 5,000 people across their operations and taxpayer assistance centers to deal with filing backlogs, delayed processing and customer service issues.
Along with a new IRS commissioner (Danny Werfel) in 2023, the IRS is gearing up for what is expected to be a busy 2023 tax season, and hoping for a more normal refund processing schedule.
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[September 2022] In a recent speech, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced how part of the funding approved under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will be spent by the IRS to modernize systems and hire a lot more staff to improve tax return and refund processing.
Here are some of the key initiatives being implemented (you can also see a video of this here)
The Biggest Issues With the IRS
More Staff To Get a Live IRS Agent
Getting a live IRS agent in the last 2 to 3 tax seasons has been a challenge with hold times over 1 hour in many cases.
Hiring and training more representatives, if done in time, will be a huge help along with increase staffing at Taxpayer Assistance Centers.
Modernizing Systems
With many legacy tax processing systems and ongoing performance challenges, major upgrades and modernization efforts will allow the IRS to do things more efficiently in an automated and more predictable manner.
More Enforcement and Audits
But to pay for all the extra funding and overall IRA bill, the IRS will have to collect more unpaid taxes and target higher net worth individuals and business to pay their fair share.
Do you think this will improve tax processing in 2023 and clear past year backlogs more effectively?
They still can’t find enough people to fill all the open jobs at The IRS. Go too usa.gov and look and see. Lots of open jobs not yet filled. So I don’t think refunds will get any quicker.
“But to pay for all the extra funding and overall IRA bill, the IRS will have to collect more unpaid taxes and target higher net worth individuals and business to pay their fair share.”
Is that some sort of joke? Those higher net worth people have accountants which have years and years of experience. The noob agents are not going to get 1 cent out of those people so they will turn their attention to those making under 100k.