If last tax seasons late start wasn't bad enough, IRS has already announced a delay in processing returns. This delay affects low income taxpayers the most. Those taxpayers count on their refunds boosted by the earned income credit addition. As we have talked about before, we believe that the one year delay in the business Obamacare mandate, was the direct result of IRS inability to update their computer systems. Read between the lines from the quoted press release:
The Internal Revenue Service today announced a delay of
approximately one to two weeks to the start of the 2014 filing season to allow
adequate time to program and test tax processing systems following the 16-day
federal government closure.
The IRS is exploring options to shorten the expected delay and will announce
a final decision on the start of the 2014 filing season in December, Acting IRS
Commissioner Danny Werfel said. The original start date of the 2014 filing
season was Jan. 21, and with a one- to two-week delay, the IRS would start
accepting and processing 2013 individual tax returns no earlier than Jan. 28
and no later than Feb. 4.
The government closure came during the peak period for preparing IRS systems
for the 2014 filing season. Programming, testing and deployment of more than 50
IRS systems is needed to handle processing of nearly 150 million tax returns.
Updating these core systems is a complex, year-round process with the majority
of the work beginning in the fall of each year.
About 90 percent of IRS operations were closed during the shutdown, with
some major work streams closed entirely during this period, putting the IRS
nearly three weeks behind its tight timetable for being ready to start the 2014
filing season. There are additional training, programming and testing demands
on IRS systems this year in order to provide additional refund fraud and
identity theft detection and prevention.
“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.”
The IRS will not process paper tax returns before the start date, which will
be announced in December. There is no advantage to filing on paper before the
opening date, and taxpayers will receive their tax refunds much faster by using
e-file with direct deposit. The April 15 tax deadline is set by statute and
will remain in place. However, the IRS reminds taxpayers that anyone can
request an automatic six-month extension to file their tax return. The request
is easily done with Form 4868, which can be filed electronically or on paper.
IRS processes, applications and databases must be updated annually to
reflect tax law updates, business process changes, and programming updates in
time for the start of the filing season.
The IRS continues resuming and assessing operations following the 16-day
closure. The IRS is seeing heavy demand on its toll-free telephone lines,
walk-in sites and other services from taxpayers and tax practitioners.
During the closure, the IRS received 400,000 pieces of correspondence, on
top of the 1 million items already being processed before the shutdown.
No comments:
Post a Comment