Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

It’s no secret governments have had difficulties responding to the coronavirus outbreak. But just how bad have things gotten at some federal agencies?

Consider what’s happening at the IRS:

The IRS is piling unopened business tax refund requests into storage trailers and advising companies to file by fax instead. It’s stopped answering phone calls on taxpayer assistance lines. And it’s not processing millions of paper tax returns filed by individual Americans.

The coronavirus pandemic has nearly crippled the tax collection agency, which relies on antiquated technology and still does a lot of business on paper, just as it is most needed to help pump money into the ailing economy.

Perhaps it’s a good thing, then, that the due date to file federal taxes has been pushed back to July 15. 

But that’s small consolation to those who have filed and could really use their tax refunds:

…millions of individual taxpayers and businesses could face lengthy delays before they receive refunds they desperately need as the coronavirus halts their incomes. Taxpayers disputing how much they owe or waiting to see if they qualify for tax credits also could have to wait indefinitely.

Despite the delays, the IRS still  “urges taxpayers who are owed a refund to file as quickly as possible.”

Just don’t plan on spending it any time soon.

Image Credit: By Joshua Doubek (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons