Crapo: IRS Should Do More for Taxpayers During Frustrating Filing Season

Washington, D.C.--The 2022 tax filing season is shaping up to be one of the most challenging and frustrating in decades, on the heels of difficult 2020 and 2021 filing seasons.  At a Senate Finance Committee hearing on customer service challenges at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) outlined the many issues plaguing both taxpayers and the agency, and called on the IRS to do more to help taxpayers.

To read Senator Crapo’s full remarks, click here.  To watch, click here or the image above. 

Taxpayers face challenging, frustrating filing season:

“In 2021, just over one in ten Americans was ever able to reach the IRS by telephone.  More than 250 million calls to the IRS went unanswered in 2021.  Those who did manage to get through spent more than 23 minutes on hold, to say nothing of the lengthy waits spent by those who could not get through at all.”

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“Currently, millions of Americans need to file their tax returns, despite not having their last year’s tax returns even processed.  These are by no means the only areas of deep concern.”

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“Many Americans await last year’s tax refunds.  Many Americans await any response to correspondence they sent the IRS, in many instances many months ago.  Many Americans have received incorrect or outdated information from the IRS, or have been subject to improper collections or other adverse actions simply because the IRS does not know they have filed a return or responded to a notice.  Many Americans cannot receive accurate answers to basic questions, like how long it will take to receive their tax refund or an answer to their correspondence.”

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“I appreciate the willingness of the IRS to be open to providing relief to taxpayers affected by the straining circumstances of this filing season.  But the IRS has the ability to do more, and taxpayers deserve more.”

Massive funding boost not the answer:

“The entire attack from some on the other side of the aisle, saying that the cause of our crisis right now is the failure of Republicans to adequately fund the IRS over the years, is, in my opinion, an attempt to justify why we see the crisis, and to try to justify their desire, which was built into the Build Back Better Act: an $80 billion influx of revenue to the IRS.” 

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“When you look at the so-called tax gap--and there is a tax gap--that tax gap comes largely from the lower- and middle-income categories from people who are having difficulty figuring out how to deal with the complex IRS code.  That is not the entirety of it, but that is where the focus really is, and that is why we were fighting so hard not to have such a heavy-handed response to help those in our society who are having difficulty dealing with the IRS; to just face basically an increased enforcement pressure.”

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“In the last four or five years, the IRS budget has been appropriated at 100 percent of their budget request.  This was not a problem that came about because Congress was refusing to give the IRS its requested budget--it is a problem which the IRS leadership has told us, as recently as a day ago or so, came about because of the pandemic, which shut down the IRS, just like it shut down much more of the economy.” 

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