Greetings from the Seth and Alexander team,

 

As we enter the 2022 tax season, we want to make you aware of some delays that can occur this year. The IRS is still dealing with backups in processing returns from the past two filing seasons. While the tax collector typically has about 1 million pieces of unopened mail, including tax returns, in its backlog when starting a new filing season, it had 6 million unprocessed individual returns as of Dec. 23, the most recent date for which data is available on the agency’s website.

 

We will work through these challenges with our clients. We will continue to file electronically. We also encourage you to provide direct deposit information rather than requesting paper checks for a return. If you have a tax liability, you may want to pay it on the IRS website rather than mailing in a check. 

 

While we are here to assist each of you, you can also turn to the IRS website for self-help answers to questions rather than calling the IRS, given the low level of service from perpetually flooded phone lines. 

 

As we prepare your returns, we will ask questions regarding the economic stimulus checks the IRS previously sent out and advance Child Tax Credit payments. More than 30 million households received their payments from July through December. Claiming these credits will be key this year so that we do properly take them into account, without requiring a follow up from the IRS.

 

The deadline for 2021 tax returns is April 18 (unless an extension is filed) for most individual filers.The Treasury has said that the agency should be able to process most refunds within three weeks, its normal turnaround time.

 

If you have received notices from the IRS, keep in mind that several of those notices are auto generated. We will work with our clients to respond to notices, but we are expecting significant delays in responses from the IRS.