Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

The Internal Revenue Service is getting back to work, tackling a backlog unfinished business – including sending out millions of notices to taxpayers.

Turns out a lot of those notices are wrong – and that’s causing taxpayers, and the IRS a lot of problems.

According to the Taxpayers Advocate’s office:

 During the shutdown, the IRS generated more than 20 million notices; however, these notices were not mailed.  As a result, the notices bear dates that now have passed, some by several months, and some of the notices require taxpayers to respond by deadlines that also have passed.

What are you supposed to do if you got one of these outdated notices in the mail?

The IRS is providing additional time to respond before interest or penalties apply.  To explain the extended response deadlines, the IRS is including in its mailings “inserts” such as Notice 1052-A, entitled “Important! You have More Time to make Your Payment.”  But even with these inserts, we anticipate confusion for taxpayers.  The challenge will be to review the entire package and reference the insert to determine the revised due date before stressing out.

“Before stressing out.” That’s helpful (?) advice from an agency that isn’t exactly known for easing people’s minds.

The Taxpayer Advocate’s office says it is working with the IRS to “develop insert language that will clarify the new deadlines,” but expects there will be plenty of confusion not just for taxpayers, but tax accountants, too.

The Advocate says it’s “bottom line” is for taxpayers to “Look for and Read the Insert for Applicable Due Dates.”

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