IRS Faces Huge Mailroom Backlog

Internal Revenue Service operations were crippled during the government shutdown that ended the first week of February with millions of mail pieces unprocessed, according to Nina E. Olson, the IRS’ National Taxpayer Advocate.

Olson commented on the effects of the shutdown in the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2018 Annual Report to Congress.

“On January 24, 2019, the IRS had over 5 million pieces of mail that had not been batched for processing,” Olson states in the report, noting that “80,000 responses to FY 2018 Earned Income Tax Credit audits had … not been addressed and 87,000 amended returns (were) waiting to be processed.”

“On December 21, 2018, the day before the shutdown, the IRS was already struggling with its inventory of work. During 2018, the IRS shuff led resources around to meet the challenge of implementing the new tax law while wrestling with record inventory levels of unresolved cases in its fraud detection programs,” Olson reports.

Click for the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2018 Annual Report to Congress