Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee hearing to examine taxpayer problems with IRS

House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., announced this week that his panel will hold a hearing with the National Taxpayer Advocate on February 8 to examine challenges facing taxpayers in dealing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The hearing will take place as the 2021 tax filing season enters its third week and as the agency still struggles to clear a backlog of several million unprocessed tax returns from the 2020 tax year—a situation the Service has attributed to pandemic-related shutdowns and staffing shortages, as well as years of congressionally mandated budget cuts.

National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins last month released her annual report to Congress in which she detailed some of the difficulties of the 2020 filing season and cautioned that that she is “deeply concerned” about the possibility of delayed processing of 2021 returns—particularly in the case of taxpayers who file paper returns. Collins also noted in a recent blog post that “taxpayers and practitioners continue to experience frustration over lack of adequate phone service” as they seek answers to questions about advance child tax credit payments, the 2021 recovery rebate credit, unprocessed returns and refund claims, and unresolved 2020 tax return issues.

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